Mortgage, Real Estate | featured news

The Obama administration is considering unveiling new plans next week to revive the ailing housing market and reduce foreclosures, including an effort to help troubled borrowers refinance their mortgages.

While it's cheaper to buy than to rent in most of America's big cities, access to mortgages is tough in the wake of tighter credit standards from banks.

The average rate on a 30-year fixed mortgage has fallen to its lowest level on records dating to 1971.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Bank of America has agreed to sell a portion of its home loan portfolio to Fannie Mae. The Journal said the deal to sell a pool of 400,000 loans to the government-sponsored mortgage holder was finalized last Friday.

Mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac FMCC.OB said on Monday it would ask for an additional $1.5 billion from taxpayers due to losses stemming from the weak housing market.

The insurer AIG is suing Bank of America Corp to recover more than $10 billion of losses from a "massive fraud" on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest U.S. bank.

U.S. mortgage rates dropped to new lows after the latest round of gloomy economic data hurt Treasury yields, according to Freddie Mac's weekly survey of mortgage rates.

Bank of America is reportedly willing to pay its way out of future mortgage and foreclosure claims.

It is far too easy to say that minorities have only themselves to blame for their wealth decline because they bought homes they couldn’t afford. That argument would let so many off the hook. It would excuse the government for its monumental failure to tame predatory lenders. And it would absolve the lenders who came up with exotic mortgages that should never have been pitched ubiquitously, especially not to financially fragile minority borrowers. But blaming the victim is what we do so well in America.

Countrywide Home Loans agreed to pay borrowers $108 million for charging excessive fees when they fell behind on their mortgages.