The share of borrowers who are falling seriously behind on loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration jumped by more than a third in the past year, foreshadowing a crush of foreclosures that could further buffet an agency vital to the housing market’s recovery. (more…)

All the King’s horses and all the King’s men have been busy propping up the housing market but sometime this year, perhaps soon, it will face a Humpty Dumpty moment. (more…)

Go ahead. Break the chains. Stop paying on your mortgage if you owe more than the house is worth. And most important: Don’t feel guilty about it. Don’t think you’re doing something morally wrong. (more…)

On May 11, MacroMarkets will IPO two new securities that truly change the game for asset allocation in a stock account. No longer resigned to use REITs as a surrogate for real estate exposure, stock investors will now be able to speculate on residential housing itself. (more…)

Home values in the United States extended their fall in the first quarter, with more than one in five homeowners now owing more on their mortgages than their homes are worth, real estate website Zillow.com said on Wednesday.
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Policies aimed at easing home-loan terms for troubled borrowers may not be as effective in preventing foreclosures as more-direct aid to homeowners, Federal Reserve economists found. (more…)

Now we got details about the refinance of “underwater” properties: (more…)

Mercy James thought she had lost her rental property here to foreclosure. A date for a sheriff’s sale had been set, and notices about the foreclosure process were piling up in her mailbox. (more…)

Banks in the U.S. face a new source of write-downs and failures in the coming year as loans made to developers to finance residential and commercial property development rapidly go bad. (more…)

The U.S. housing market slump is nowhere near over and home prices will probably keep falling well into next year, one of the property market’s best-known economists said. (more…)