and now something completely different

Home Prices Over The Past Year

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What was that?

National News

Prices rose in 13 of the 20 cities tracked by the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home-price index, according to the April report released today. The index covers metro areas that together make up about 50 percent of U.S. households. It measures sale prices of select homes in those cities compared with prices in January 2000. It then provides a three-month average. The April data is the latest available.

The sharpest increases were in Washington, D.C. The next-largest were in Seattle, San Francisco, and Atlanta.

It's much too early to tell if this is a turning point or simply due to the usual spring market increase. The only times in recent history when prices didn't see a spring uptick was in the thick of the crash. Remember there's still nearly 2 million foreclosures could hit the market over the next two years.

Freddie & Fannie Summer Clearance Sale

filed under foreclosures national news

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have massive numbers of properties taken back through foreclosures. Fannie Mae had 153,549 of them at the end of the first quarter, and Freddie Mac owned 65,174. They need to quickly find new owners.

Both have now begun time-limited sales campaigns with significant incentives for new owner-occupant purchasers, and are now offering to pay up to 3.5 percent of the price of the house toward buyers’ closing costs.

Fannie and Freddie both do repairs to bring houses up to what they believe are marketable standards, but all homes are sold as is. Fannie also has what it calls a “renovation mortgage” option that provides additional mortgage amounts to cover fix-ups. Fannie’s program even offers mortgage money to help finance purchases, sometimes with as little as a 3 percent down payment. Freddie does not offer special mortgage financing for buyers during the sale period, but has other inducements, including two-year home warranties and 30 percent discounts on appliances. There's even an extra $1,200 cash for the real estate agent.

Fannie’s program covers properties on which contracts are accepted and close no later than Oct. 31, while Freddie’s sale requires contracts no later than July 31 and closings by Sept. 30.

No investors allowed

Notorious Hacker's Den discovered in Wickford, Essex UK

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Up to a dozen officers from the London Metropolitan Police raided a hacker's den, arrested and charged one Ryan Cleary with offences relating to his alleged involvement with the group Lulzsec.

The primary offence, was a conspiracy to hack computers and to then disseminate a program that would commit Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. In all, Cleary was charged with four UK offences under Section 3 and 3A of the Computer Misuse Act of 1990 and one offence under Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act of 1997.

Obviously technically overmatched, a number of Cleary's targets included the UK's Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), and the British Phonographic Industry (BPI). Cleary could also face extradition to the US, where he may face offences relating to attacks on the Sony Corporation, the US Senate, the FBI and the CIA.

Apparently angered by the recording industry's attempts to limit the downloading of certain popular songs on the Internet without what he referred to as "highway robbery prices," the 19-year-old Cleary determined to "fight back against those agencies that were at fault."

Cleary operated from a deceptively non-descript beige bedroom with one feline co-conspirator. The Met Police had been monitoring the activities within the den for weeks. According to Police Sargent William Finkle, the optimum time for the raid was chosen when Cleary left the den and traveled to the kitchen where he was baking a pizza.

Fortunately there were no injuries reported by the police.

Happy Monday ;-)

Good Strategic Default Video from CBS

Gov gives Banks 30 more days to submit plans to fix foreclosure practises

In April of this year, Federal regulators told Citibank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and a dozen more mortgage lenders and servicers that they had 45 days to hire auditors showing how many people could have avoided foreclosure in 2009 and 2010. They were also told by to reimburse homeowners who lost their homes through the banks "incorrect" foreclosure methods.

On Monday, the Department of Justice asked Regulators to give the financial firms another 30 days to coordinate with state and federal agencies.

Foreclosure Limbo

Millions are staying in their homes without paying their mortgages.

Some 4.2 million mortgage borrowers are either seriously delinquent or have had their cases referred to lawyers to pursue foreclosure auctions, according to LPS Applied Analytics. Of those, two-thirds have made no payments at all for at least a year, and nearly one-third have gone more than two years.

These cases can go on and on. Nationwide, it takes an average of 565 days to foreclose on borrowers in default from their first missed payments to the final auction. In New York, the average is 800 days and in Florida, where the "robo-signing" issue is particularly combative, it's 807.

Florida couple threatens bank with foreclosure

Eric Strachan AP ST. PETERSBURG, Florida — Months after Bank of America wrongly foreclosed on a house Warren and Maureen Nyerges had already paid for, they were still fighting to get reimbursed for the court battle.

So on Friday, their attorney showed up at a branch office in Naples with a moving truck and sheriff's deputies who had a judge's permission to seize the furniture if necessary. An hour later, the bank had written a check for $5,772.88.

After the moving company and sheriff's deputies get their share, the Nyerges should receive the rest of the money this week, ending a bizarre saga that started when they paid Bank of America $165,000 cash for a 2,700-square-foot foreclosed home in Naples in 2009.

About four months later, a process server knocked on their door and handed Warren Nyerges a notice of foreclosure.

"This is a big mistake," he recalled saying. "You must have the wrong house. We bought a foreclosure and don't have a mortgage."

That started 18 months of frustrating phone calls, paperwork and court hearings. Whenever Nyerges called the bank, representatives told him to "come up to date" with his payments. When he called 25 different law firms, no attorney would take the case. When he went to court, the lawyers for the bank filed incorrect motions and were woefully unprepared for the hearings.

Eventually the Nyerges fought the foreclosure and won, proving that they owned the home outright.

In September 2010, a judge ordered Bank of America to pay the couple's $2,534 attorney fees. But by last week, the bank hadn't paid up, so Allen got a judge's permission to seize assets.

This isn't the first time that Bank of America has tried to foreclose on a property that was owned by a person without a mortgage. In 2009, a Fort Lauderdale man named Jason Grodensky bought a home in cash from Bank of America in a short sale. But in court, the foreclosure case continued and a judge ordered the property to be sold. Bank of America acknowledged the error and rescinded the foreclosure.

The Nyerges case is symbolic of the foreclosure crisis. Courts are backlogged, and banks and their attorneys aren't scrutinizing foreclosure paperwork. And Nyerges said he's still upset with Bank of America.

"They couldn't even spell our name right in the apology," he said.

Record Low Equity