BUYING OR LENDING ON A HOUSE IS STILL RISKY

MOST POPULAR ARTICLES

CLICK HERE TO GET COMBO TITLE AND SECURITIZATION REPORT

CUSTOMER SERVICE 520-405-1688

Editor’s Analysis: It all started with flooding the market with money in deals that even Alan Greenspan couldn’t understand with an army of over 100 PHD’s. Median income was going down, median expenses were going up, and people were having an increasingly difficult time making ends meet even with 3 jobs per household.

Along came Wall Street and convinced millions of homeowners that they could afford “payments” that would reduce their monthly rent or current mortgage payment and give them an investment that would rise in value without any work on their part. It was a lie.

For a while it worked. Between the flood of money coming in, the absence of underwriting standards and the complicity of developers who raised prices to give greater credence to the actual price of the house, people were lured into deals where the value of the house was falsely inflated by bank manipulation of appraisers and then die was cast.

The payments would go up beyond anything the borrowers could ever afford, the house values would go down leaving the borrowers with a debt much higher than the house would ever be valued for the foreseeable future and the good and bad loans would collapse, providing a payoff to banks and other speculators who bet on a sure thing: foreclosures would rock the nation, the value of the bonds sold to pension funds would plummet and the payoff on the bet went to the banks instead of the investors and borrowers who were defrauded.

So now we are back we we started from in 2001 — median home prices at around $154,000, which was still out of reach for many borrowers. Home prices had been falsely inflated to a median price that was over 140% of the starting prices. While realtors are trumpeting the low prices as the reason for  growth in the volume of home sales, Zillow continues to forecast a continued slide in prices for 2012.

The Banks made a mountain of money doing the deal telling investors that these were Triple A rated insured investments while knowing that the bulk of the loans were garbage and that for good measure they created transactions within each pool where the best tier of loans would still be brought down in a crash because they had guaranteed the worst tier. There was no way for the Banks to lose — and plenty for them to make, especially when the U.S. Government paid off the bets.

Most of us who analyze the real figures and apply the context of illicit behavior on the part of the banks realize two things: (1) as long as wrongful foreclosures continue, the housing market will continue to drag down our economy and (2) the balance sheets of the large banks who created this mess is vastly overstated on assets and vastly understated on liabilities.

At some point, this will all come home to roost. In the meanwhile, buying a house is risky not only because the value is mostly likely going down, but because of the corruption of title by the Banks through the nation, there is no assurance that buying a house will actually get you clear title unencumbered by prior mortgages of record.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Home prices fell to their lowest point in more than a decade in January, which helped to lift the pace of home sales, according to a report from an industry trade group.

The National Association of Realtors reported that the median home price in January fell 2% from December to $154,700. That’s the lowest price reading since November 2001, before the run-up in home prices that became known as the housing bubble.

The median price is the point at which half of homes are sold for a higher price, and half are sold at a lower price. (Multi-million dollar foreclosures)

Serving as a drag on existing home prices is a large inventory of homes in foreclosure. Distressed home sales, which includes homes in foreclosure and so-called short sales in which the home is sold for less than what is owed on the mortgage, made up 35% of sales in January.

“Prices will continue to fall through the first half of 2012 due to the high share of distressed sales,” said Stuart Hoffman, chief economist with PNC Financial. “The recent agreement between the big mortgage servicers, state attorneys general and the Obama administration will also result in more homes going to foreclosure over the next few months, adding to downward pressure on prices.”

But the pace of sales rose to the highest level since May of 2010, helped by the low prices and rock-bottom mortgage rates. The seasonally-adjusted annual sales pace of 4.57 million homes was up slightly from the revised 4.38 million in December. The last time homes sold at that pace, buyers were rushing to qualify for an $8,000 homebuyer’s tax credit that was about to expire. The latest reading was roughly in line with the expectations of economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

“The uptrend in home sales is in line with all of the underlying fundamentals — pent-up household formation, record-low mortgage interest rates, bargain home prices, sustained job creation and rising rents,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the Realtors.

The housing market has been showing signs of recovery in recent months. The combination of low mortgage rates and a decline in home prices means homes are more affordable than they’ve been in decades. PNC’s Hoffman agreed that the report is a further sign of recovery in the market, although he cautioned “it will remain a long process.”

Tags: 60 minutes, affidavits • attesting • Daniel Edstrom • DTC-Systems • fabricating • false information • false sworn documents • foreclose • illicit business practices • improper statements • imp, AHMSI, appraisal fraud, attorney general, auction fraud, Chris Koster, credit bids, DocX Indictment, foreclosure fraud, FORECLOSURE SETTLEMENT, foreclosures, forgery, housing market, housing prices, investors, linda green, LPS, Missouri, mortgage fruad, mortgages, Robo-Signing, settlement, strategic default, Wells Fargo
Posted in bubble, Corruption, Eviction, securities fraud |