Hathaway Duke

A truly dedicated blogger would have gone down to the Town Hall to cover this forum directly. Instead, we’ll just rip and post a few notable bullet points from the Strib’s coverage of the affair. Depth of the problem: “A congressional study predicts the Twin Cities alone will lose $1.6 billion in property value by the end of 2009.” “Another study, by the Minnesota research group Housing Link, predicts foreclosures across the state — 20,500 through September — will quadruple this year over 2005.” Renters Hit: “In 2006, 88 renters called [a help hotline] saying they were stuck because their landlord was in foreclosure, Vraa said. So far this year, the number is 349.” Mortgage Brokers Dwindling: “Brokerage license applications came up for regular review at the end of last month, Bendel said, and early indications are the number of licenses dropped from 4,000 to about 1,400.” Senator Colemans Recommendations: “He left with two recommendations: that the federal government allocate even more money for foreclosure prevention counseling, and that, on the other hand, it not overreact with sweeping, new real estate and financial regulations.” Coleman: Speed Up Help on Housing [Strib]

Local · Dealing with Problem/Vacant Homes in Mpls [SW Journal] · Permits, Single Family Starts Decline in OCT [Strib] · Minnesota Economist Drops the R-Word [MinnPost] · Bloomington Based Rescap May go BK [WCCO/AP] · Small Farm Tax-Break Crackdown [WCCO] · SkyScape Gets Eatery [Strib] · Metro 69th on Foreclosure List [Strib] · MN Job Growth Stalls [TCBJ] Elsewhere & Otherwise · BCA Research: Much Lower Rates and Yields Ahead [BCA] · Foreclosure Ground Zero: Looting and More [CNN] · House Passes Mortgage Reform Bill [WSJ] · A Brief History of the Gold Standard [TheStreet]

Wesley A. Snyder, 71, Oley, Pennsylvania, is charged in a one count Information filed in U.S. District Court in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, with Mail Fraud Affecting a Financial Institution, 18 U.S.C. § 1341. The Information alleges that between 1988 an…

Anthony Belletteiri, a real estate lawyer and former partner in the now defunct Westchester, New York law firm of Bellettieri, Fonte & Laudonio, P.C. (BF&L), was sentenced in White Plains, New York federal court to 121 months in prison for havi…

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock and have some lingering doubts about how poorly sub-prime home loans have been performing, and how utterly, insanely, lax lending standards had become in the sub-prime space, take a look at the graph at right from the WSJ. That is one wicked looking curve, that has gone vertical, and shows no signs of stopping. Ugly Stuff. That said, we did find the performance of prime loans (you know, the ones made to people who actually had some prayer of repaying) encouraging. Apparently well within historical norms. In other words, everyone knows sub-prime is junk, but if prime delinquencies start to spike dramatically, look out. Then we will have an actual housing crisis on our hands.

Graphic via MSNBC Last Week: Mortgage bonds eeeked out some modest improvement last week after the CPI and PPI (consumer and producer price indices, respectively, which measure inflation) came in on par with market expectations - though there is a credible argument that inflation is not so benign, and may force rates up. Despite the differeing opinions on the level of inflation, Mortgage rates remain on a gentle downtrend. This Week: The economic calendar will give us a glimpse at the porentially market moving Fed Minutes (insider notes from the last Fed Meeting, which provide additional insight into the Fed’s stance regarding future rate cuts) and housing starts. Skeleton crews at the bond trading desks over a holiday-shortened week can make for a volatile mix. If you have not locked your rate and are closing soon, this can be a tricky week to float. Tread carefully. This Week’s Economic Calendar [Barrons]

Dale Scott Heineman and Kurt F. Johnson, principals with the Dorean Group, were found guilty by a federal jury of all remaining counts in the indictment.  Sentencing for the two defendants is set for March 18, 2008. As previously reported by Mor…

Matthew Bevan Cox, 38, formerly of Nashville, Tennessee, Atlanta, Georgia, and Tampa, Georgia, was sentenced on charges of mortgage fraud, identity theft, passport fraud and violation of the terms of his probation. As previously reported by Mortgage …

Senator Coleman, who recently proposed legislation allowing homeowners to tap retirement accounts to avoid foreclosure (a decent bill, by the way - more on this here) will be holding a town hall meeting to address the mortgage/housing situation in Minnesota: As part of Senator Coleman’s on-going efforts to address the mortgage crisis affecting homeowners across the state, the Senator will be holding a Town Hall Forum the afternoon of Monday, November 19th at Greater Twin Cities United Way. Robert Steel Under Secretary for Domestic Finance, U.S. Department of the Treasury and Richard Todd, Vice President of Supervision, Regulation and Credit at Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis will be joining Senator Coleman at the Town Hall Forum to hear first-hand from homeowners, community housing organizations and key industry groups. The Forum will seek to address federal and state efforts to assist distressed homeowners and the root causes of the current mortgage crisis so that future such crisis can be avoided. Though we’d like to believe that this type of gathering would advance some useful solutions on this front, these town halls typically work out as nothing more than a combination of political pandering and mass airing-of-grievances. In other words, we find it hard to believe that anything new will be discovered here. We know the root causes: Regulatory bodies asleep at the wheel while the mortgage market, (borrowers and lenders alike) careened out of control. We also know the solution: Prosecute bona-fide cases of fraud, let those that took too much risk (lenders and borrowers) suffer the consequences, and erect some meaningful regulatory boundaries and barriers to entry across the entire spectrum of mortgage banking. Senator Coleman to Host Housing Forum [Coleman.gov]

D & T National Appraisals, Inc., and its CEO, Donato Odato, 54, 166-11 Cryders Lane, Whitestone, New York, have been variously charged with second- and third-degree forgery, criminal possession of a forged instrument, first- and second-degree falsi…