Deconstructing HAMP and HARP

By: Alan Aptheker

Homeowners, by in large, haven’t taken the full advantage of the super-low mortgage rates to refinance their homes, for reasons ranging from dinged credit, to more stringent lending standards.

A couple of responses to this dilemma are worth a re-look: The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) and the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). They both were established in 2009, and as we move into 2015, time for some remedial reading about HARP and HAMP.  

HARP is a lifeline for qualifying borrowers who are current on their payments, and whose mortgages are owned or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and can refinance even if they have insufficient equity to qualify for a traditional

By: Alan Aptheker

Based on this title, you may think I’ll be discussing the excessive use of alliteration in the titles of articles about the housing industry.  No, it’s about Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller Index, or S&P/Case–Shiller, or “CSI.” It’s a U.S. national home price set of indices that measures the average change in the total value of all existing single-family homes, in the aggregate, in the U.S. The first thing we can all agree upon: some studies just happen to end up with a very cool acronym.

Karl Case, Robert Shiller and Allan Weiss developed the CSI in the 1980s to come up with a more meaningful metric with respect to housing prices, that is, better than your basic monthly snapshot. 

Paperless Mortgage - E Signature
By: Alan Aptheker

Been to a closing lately? Did you see any indication that electronic signatures have been legal in the United States since the year 2000?  Click to sign has the potential to be the new “swipe to buy,” but it’s been slow to catch on, as acceptance at the Federal Housing Administration and the Internal Revenue Service has been tepid.

Ask Well Fargo spokesman Jim Hines. "For some lenders, having an inconsistent process across all products is not an option. They're holding off implementing electronic signatures until they can offer them for all products." There are signs that the IRS and the FHA are softening by developing policies that let mortgage lenders and borrowers e-sign a variety of mortgage

‎Homes in some stage of foreclosure or bank Real Estate Owned (REOs) properties accounted for more than a quarter of all U.S. residential sales during the first quarter, according to new data from Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac. This is up from 22% of all sales in the fourth quarter of 2011 and up from 25% of all sales in the first quarter of 2011.

Third parties purchased a total of 233,299 residential properties in some stage of pre-foreclosure - defaults and scheduled foreclosure auctions - or REO properties during the first quarter, an increase of 8% from the previous quarter and virtually unchanged from the first quarter of 2011.

The average sales price of homes in foreclosure or REO properties was $161,214 in the first quarter, down 1% from

The research firm Capital Economics are among the growing cadre of economists and industry forecasters that believe that the crisis is coming to an end. They cite one big factor, albeit an obvious one, and that’s loosening credit. 

As economists are prone to do, they blow through the water cooler buzz and head straight for the numbers, so here they are. If you have a credit score of 700, you should be able to qualify for a loan. Sure, this is a higher number than may have been required five years ago, but it’s remained fairly flat over the last two years. 

Phrased another way, the number, at least, is not rising. The Federal Reserve reported that credit score requirements in the fourth quarter of 2011 were about the same in previous two quarters of