Study Group: Secondary Mortgage Marketing Experts(?)

Many home builders are concerned that a provision in the new federal Housing Bill will reduce sales to borrowers that used phoney grants from charities to fund their downpayments.   The new legislation ends the circular charade of allowing builders and other home sellers...

During the residential real estate bubble, underwriting standards were relaxed so far that unprecedented numbers of unqualified borrowers became new homeowners and many existing homeowners serially refinanced into loans that that they could not afford. Once the air began leaking from the bubble,...

Thsi WSJ article simply and clearly lays out the three key factors behind the current "housing crisis:"  financial engineering by Wall Street that increased risk, unconscionable enabling by rating agencies, and asleep-at-the-switch regulators.

Many banks will no longer be able to deny huge losses on their portfolios of loans to residential and other developers.  Recognition and realization of these losses will seriously damage the financial strength of many banks, particularly smaller ones.  Expect increasing bank failures.

Until the housing mortgage markets are no longer under severe stress, the federal government will do whatever it takes to ensure the solvency of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.  Therefore, rating agency downgrades of these government-sponsored entities are irrelevant for the foreseeable future....