Interest rates are at historical lows so many homeowners are calling banks and trying to get in on the action.
Only problem? Housing prices have fallen so much so that now people owe more on their homes than they’re worth…making refinancing an impossibility.
From Miami Herald…

In South Florida, four in 10 homeowners who bought or refinanced over [...]

The economy apparently doesn’t realize this is a season of giving. The latest data present us with two major Grinches. 1) the 0.5% GDP decline in the third quarter has been confirmed and some expect as much as a 6.0% GDP decline in the fourth quarter. 2) Median home prices have suffered the worst decline [...]

The subprime mess was just the beginning.
Because this time it’s not the low income mortgages.

This is truly frightening stuff folks. I can’t help but think it’s going to get REALLY bad before it gets better.

As we all know, no sector of the economy has been hit by the recession as hard as the housing market. Now, new numbers indicate that American home values have lost $2 trillion in value during the first three quarters of 2008. Around 11.4 million homeowners are now “underwater” on their homes, owing more than [...]

From Reuters:
With a pretty red-brick downtown lined with stores, good schools and a railway line to nearby Chicago, Hinsdale has been popular among wealthy doctors, lawyers and executives.
It has also seen a 37 percent jump in foreclosure filings this year, according to research firm RealtyTrac, and local data shows the average home sale price has [...]

Some more “depressing” statistics come out on the heels of the massive jobless claims last month.
From Bloomberg:
The share of mortgages 30 days or more overdue rose to a seasonally adjusted 6.99 percent while loans already in foreclosure rose to 2.97 percent, both all-time highs in a survey that goes back 29 years, the Mortgage Bankers [...]

What continues to bother me about the financial crisis is that so many people saw the warning signs and yet so many others refused to pay attention to the risks.
A new AP report reveals the extent to which the Bush administration ignored the danger. Here’s a list of what the administration could have done [...]

I’m stealing this from Doug because it’s so good…

Doug, I owe you a beer when we actually meet outside of the blogosphere. This made me laugh out loud.

The following video shows you something you may not have seen before…pages upon pages of tax foreclosure listings published in the Detroit Free Press.
To be specific…137 pages of tax foreclosure listings.
Basically, these are people who are delinquent on paying their taxes and could have their homes foreclosed on in 2009 if they don’t [...]

The housing/credit crisis has a lot of causes and plenty of parents, in both the public and private sectors. One man who’s been involved in housing at the highest levels of government and at the most intimate levels of a local community is Henry Cisneros, the former mayor of San Antonio and Bill Clinton’s original [...]

When you miss a detail as big as this, you have to wonder if the hand at the tiller is all that steady.
This phrase was originally in McCain’s plan: “Lenders in these cases must recognize the loss that they’ve already suffered.”
Well, that was wrong. Lenders won’t be suffering any losses at all. Instead, McCain’s plan [...]

First, Politico details the “new” proposal…
“The McCain Resurgence Plan would purchase mortgages directly from homeowners and mortgage servicers, and replace them with manageable, fixed-rate mortgages that will keep families in their homes,” according to the campaign. “By purchasing the existing, failing mortgages, the McCain Resurgence Plan will eliminate uncertainty over defaults, support the value [...]

With Americans defaulting left and right on their McMansions, a new trend is emerging.
NBC investigates…

So, could you live in a house that small? I think I could live in the second one but certainly not the first. That house was ridiculous.
Regardless, I love this “Think Small” trend. Smaller homes, smaller cars and smaller energy use. [...]