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The Mortgage Rebel
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The Mortgage Rebel arms you, the mortgage consumer, with the insider information you need to protect yourself from ploys, gimmicks, tricks and schemes used every day by bank and mortgage company loan officers. This information could easily save you thousa
Recent Posts Tagged With 'crisis'
Home Sales Sink, Prices Expected To Plummet in ‘08
The National Association of Realtors reported today that pending sales of existing homes fell once again in November to a level even worse than the reading recorded in September 2001, the month when t...
Home Prices Plummet, Retail Sales Disappoint
In the latest report on the housing market, Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller home price index showed a record drop in October home prices when compared to price levels a year before. Read ...
Mortgages Getting More Expensive
Thanks in large part to the sub-prime mortgage mess, the cost of obtaining a new mortgage for “prime” customers — those who have good credit, and verifiable employment, income and ...
Awaiting The Post-Holiday Economic Train Wreck
With six shopping days left before Christmas, retailers are holding their collective breath in anticipation of a last-minute buying binge. One thing is for sure: This Christmas will not be on the hou...
Thinking of Buying A Home Soon? Don’t, Unless..
…You’re willing to watch your equity (down payment) evaporate over the next few years. It’s like buying a car — it is certain to depreciate the minute you drive off the lot. ...
Foreclosure Solutions Available Now!
In “Foreclosures At Record High,” the latest data on the foreclosure wave sweeping America paints a bleak picture likely to last for the foreseeable future. People are losing their homes...
A $9.13 (& Counting) Trillion Time Bomb
Tick, tick, tick. The bomb you hear ticking in the background is the ever-growing mountain of Uncle Sam’s debt, increasing at the steady pace of $1 million per minute, or $1.4 billion per day....
Fed Cuts Discount Rate 1/4% - Still Sees Inflation Threat
In yet another attempt to save the U.S. economy from further pain, the U.S. Federal Reserve lowered its key overnight lending rate by 1/4 percent, acknowledging a slowing economy, while at the same ti...
Mortgage Meltdown 2007: Update
More fallout from the nation’s housing crisis emerged Monday. Despite a modest increase in the pace of home sales for October as reported by the National Association of Realtors, overall, th...
U.S. Credit Card Debt Accelerating, Fed Reports
The Federal Reserve reported Friday that consumer credit increased at an annual rate of 2.3 percent in October, faster than the 1.6 percent growth rate for September. The gain reflected an accelerat...
President Unveils Sub-Prime Plan
President Bush this afternoon announced a long-awaited initiative to help distressed sub-prime mortgage borrowers. The Bush administration has been working with the private sector, including investo...
Foreclosures At Record High
The Mortgage Bankers Association reports this morning that foreclosures reached a record high during the third quarter, while delinquencies on home mortgages are at their highest level since 1986. In ...
Home Prices: Biggest Drop In 25 Years
In the latest reading of the pulse of the U.S. housing market, Freddie Mac released a report today showing the biggest quarterly drop in national home prices in 25 years during the third quarter of 20...
Treasury’s Paulson: Sub-Prime Deal Near
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said this morning that a plan to freeze so-called “sub-prime teaser rates” is at hand and details could be released as early as this week. Read Full...
Wall Street: Blind, Deaf & Dumber Than A Box Of Rocks
Looking at this past week’s stock market data — particularly the Dow, with a 3 percent weekly gain — you might think we were flooded with great economic news portending a resoundi...
How Oil Could Crush The World
Headline: “Gas prices hit working class: Study says lower income people effectively pay 8 times more to fill up; broader economy could feel sting.” Read Full Article Earlier this year, ...
Treasury Secretary Seeks Sweeping Loan Help
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal published on Wednesday, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said he was “aggressively encouraging” the mortgage industry to develop agressive pr...
Home Prices Continue to Slump
Today, the National Association of Realtors reported that home prices fell in one third of U.S. cities last quarter, sliding 2 percent nationwide. The pace of sales also dropped 14 percent nationwid...
Give Thanks Tomorrow - Tough Times Still Ahead
At the end of the business day on the eve of Thanksgiving in the U. S., there were more sobering signs of tough times ahead. America will pause tomorrow to give thanks for its many blessings, and ...
How Oil Could Crush The World
Headline: “Gas prices hit working class: Study says lower income people effectively pay 8 times more to fill up; broader economy could feel sting.” Read Full Article Earlier this year, wo...
Appraisals Getting More Scrutiny
The mortgage meltdown is ushering in sweeping changes in the way lenders evaluate loan requests. Faced with mounting loan defaults and foreclosures, they are requiring underwriters to carefully scruti...
Housing Crunch May Not End Until 2011
Much of the blame for the mortgage meltdown has been attributed to the re-setting of interest rates tied to adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). The underlying problem is that people who were able to...
Forecast: $2 Trillion Lending Pullback
In a report released yesterday, Goldman Sachs’s chief U.S. economist Jan Hatzius said mounting credit losses could force banks to reduce their lending by nearly $2 trillion. “This is a l...
Fannie Mae: No Housing Recovery Till End of ‘09
Top executives at Fannie Mae now believe that home prices will not “begin to stabilize until the end of 2009,” Fannie Mae president and chief executive officer Daniel Mudd told investors...
CEO: Housing Slump Worst Since Great Depression
According to Wells Fargo President John Stumpf, the current housing slump is the worst since the Great Depression. On Thursday, he became the latest banker to voice pessimism about the difficulties ...
A $915 Billion Time Bomb: U.S. Credit Card Debt
As if the mortgage meltdown, a stagnant real estate market and declining home values, swooning consumer confidence and spending, spiraling oil prices, the declining value of the dollar, a $9 trillion ...
A Brutal Week: Some Finally Smelling The Coffee!
After a brutal economic week, some of the wind is no longer in the sails of the rosy optimists, while others who have been napping through the Summer are finally waking up to smell the brewing coffee....
BBC: Foreclosure wave sweeps America
“A wave of foreclosures and evictions is about to sweep the United States in the wake of the sub-prime mortgage lending crisis.” “As the credit crunch continues to bite, ‘famil...
Lending Standards Tighten
The results of a newly released Federal Reserve survey show that qualifying for a mortgage is becoming more restrictive. The tightening includes not only the problematic “non-traditional,”...
Federal Reserve: Burying The U.S. Alive!
“The Fed digs us a deeper hole Was last week’s interest-rate cut an act of desperation? Absolutely. Meanwhile, it’s obvious that using an applause meter to run the central bank is ...