Sign On San Diego - "Government moving toward actions against some subprime lenders" (3-14-07)

"The government is preparing to punish some subprime mortgage lenders under investigation for discriminatory practices, the Bush administration's housing secretary said Wednesday. The Housing and Urban Development Department also has suggested that the largest mortgage companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, consider giving strapped homeowners more time to make their payments, Alphonso Jackson said at a House hearing. "

Santa Cruz Sentinel - "Foreclosures on upswing" (3-14-07)

"As of March 6 this year, trustee deeds, which transfer ownership of property in default, total 105 for Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties, an exponential increase from this time last year, when nine such deeds were recorded. Notices of default and properties in foreclosure have doubled in the three counties overall, with rates in Santa Cruz lower than in Monterey. A default notice is filed after homeowners are delinquent on mortgage payments."

Daily News - "Mortgage checks come in on time" (3-13-07)

"Nearly 4.95 percent of all home mortgages in the annual survey were delinquent - 30 or more days past due - in the fourth quarter. This, in part, has been fueled by lending to high-risk borrowers with weak, or subprime, credit. When compared with other states, California ranked 43rd in delinquencies with a rate of 0.43 percent, and 40th in foreclosures with a rate of 0.58 percent, the association said. "

Los Angeles - "FEMA to sell hurricane trailers" (3-8-07)

"A year and a half after hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is auctioning off — at fire-sale prices — thousands of trailers used by storm victims, raising fears among mobile home dealers that the government will flood the market and depress prices. FEMA spent $2.7 billion to buy 145,000 mobile homes and trailers after Katrina and Rita hit the Gulf Coast in August and September 2005, paying a bulk-rate price of about $19,000 per trailer, on average. FEMA has 60,000 trailers in storage nationwide; several thousand of them were never used."

Victor Valley Daily Press - "February home sales, prices decline in Victor Valley" (3-14-07)

"The volume of February home sales swooned in the Victor Valley, falling 12.4 percent from the previous month and down 36 percent compared to the same period a year ago. Residential sale prices also declined slightly last month, falling 0.45 percent from January and 5.5 percent lower than February 2006, according to the Victor Valley Multiple Listing Service. "

Reuters - "Hispanics feel subprime home lending pain" (3-14-07)

"Only a few weeks ago, a borrower in Southern California could qualify for 100 percent financing for a house, with no proof of income or assets. Now, the lending spigot is dry."

DQNews.com - "Southland home sales slowest in a decade; new price peak" (3-14-07)

"Southern California's housing market sent out more mixed signals last month: Sales fell to a decade low while prices inched up to a new record, a real estate information service reported. A total of 17,680 new and resale homes sold in Los Angeles, Riverside, San Diego, Ventura, San Bernardino and Orange counties in February. That was down 2.5 percent from 18,128 in January, and down 19.8 percent from 22,046 in February last year, according to DataQuick Information Systems. "

LA Times - "Lending crisis ignites broad economic fears" (3-14-07)

"Stocks dive as data show more home loans in delinquency and new foreclosures at a record."

Yahoo! - "Congress must aid subprime victims: consumer group" (3-14-07)

"As many as 1.5 million Americans could lose their homes as the subprime market shakes out, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition (NCRC) said, and so Congress should step in to protect those troubled homeowners. The group, which represents hundreds of low-income housing advocates across the country, said Congress should immediately step in to aid subprime borrowers."

CNN - "$1,300...$2,000...there goes your mortgage" (3-14-07)

"When they bought their home in 2004, the Sanons had a feeling they were getting in over their heads - they were right."

Business Week - "The Mounting Uncertainty over Subprime" (3-14-07)

"Torrents of bad news from the sector leave Wall Street wondering how far the financial fallout will spread"

Bloomberg - "Subprime Market -- Isolated or a Tipping Point?" (3-14-07)

"Federal Reserve Governor Susan Bies argues that subprime ARMs make up only 7 percent to 8 percent of the $10 trillion dollar mortgage market. Doug Duncan, chief economist of the Mortgage Bankers Association, says that only 6 percent of homeowners hold subprime ARMs. By their logic, even if we saw a 20 percent default rate among subprime ARM holders -- a rate twice as high as the foreclosure peak after the 2001 recession - -that is still just over 1 percent of the full national mortgage market."

Bloomberg - "Fed, OCC Publicly Chastised Few Lenders During Boom (Update1)" (3-14-07)

"The Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency took little action in public to police the $2.8 trillion boom in the U.S. mortgage market -- whose bust now risks worsening the housing recession. The Fed, which is responsible for the stability of the banking system, didn't publicly rebuke any firm for failing to follow up warnings on home-lending practices between 2004 and 2006. The OCC, which supervises 1,793 national banks, took only three public mortgage-related consumer-protection enforcement actions over the same period. "

Forbes - "Mortgage Woes Weigh On GM" (3-14-07)

"After dramatically overhauling its North American division, General Motors pulled itself out of the red in the fourth quarter, posting a $950 million profit. But subprime mortgage exposure at its former finance subsidiary, GMAC, pushed the company’s results far below Wall Street estimates. The world's biggest automaker -- for now -- said continued cost-cutting measures and gains in emerging markets drove its net income to $950 million, or $1.68 a share,a turnaround from a $6.6 billion deficit, or $11.63 a share, in the corresponding period a year earlier, in a statement on Wednesay. "

Business Week - "Goldman's Verdict: No Contagion Yet" (3-14-07)

"The Wall Street investment bank does not see a crisis in the credit markets, despite subprime woes—as long as other banks' earnings don't tank"

Market Watch - "Subprime shakeout could hurt CDOs" (3-14-07)

"After a mortgage is sold, it's usually packaged up with other home loans into a mortgage-backed security, or MBS. But who buys the riskier parts of these derivatives -- the bits backed by subprime mortgages offered to poorer borrowers with lower credit scores? The answer may be collateralized debt obligations, or CDOs. "

Real Estate Journal - "Bulletproofing Your Mortgage: How to Spot Risks in Your Loan" (3-14-07)

"First, a set of old-fashioned financial-planning queries: Are you spending more than 28% of your pretax income on mortgage principal and interest payments, plus property taxes and homeowners insurance? Or do these four items, plus all your other debts, add up to more than 36% of your gross income? Mortgage bankers used to deploy these benchmarks religiously. In their zest to issue new loans, however, some have decided it's just fine if the figures are up into the 40s or 50s."

MBA - "Q4 2006 Commercial/Multifamily Mortgage Debt Outstanding" (3-14-07)

"At the end of 2006, $2.95 trillion in commercial/multifamily mortgage debt outstanding was recorded by the Federal Reserve, an increase of $333 billion or 12.7 percent from the end of 2005. In the fourth quarter alone, commercial and multifamily mortgage debt outstanding increased by $99 billion, or 3.5 percent. At the end of 2006, multifamily mortgage debt outstanding stood at $731 billion - an increase of $51 billion or 7.5 percent over the year, and $15 billion or 2.1 percent in the fourth quarter alone."

SacBee.com - "Subprime woes may hit capital" (3-14-07)

"A meltdown in the subprime mortgage lending market might mean trouble for a Sacramento-area market many believe is slowly coming out of its housing slump. Last year an estimated 27 percent of area buyers took out subprime loans, which have higher interest rates reflecting the risks of lending to people with blemished credit histories. Now, many here and across the country are having trouble making payments, threatening the companies that issued the loans."