First Fidelity Homes expands its offering of Bank REO properties to the NE
PR Web - Primarily focused on buying REO properties in the Midwest and Southeastern U.S., First Fidelity acquires its first REO property in Maine and adds to the assets it has in other Northeastern states such as New Jersey and Pennsylvania. As foreclosures rise, banks have an urgent need to offload these properties and offer them to investors at a considerable discount. While most investors focus on flipping, First Fidelity Homes offers a socially responsible solution.
Flipping homes can be detrimental to the physical, social, and economic well-being of a community since homes are left vacant during the process. Instead of flipping the REO properties it acquires from banks, First Fidelity offers these homes under selling financing to homeowners and structures the monthly payments to be significantly lower than market rents in the area. As Farouk Sheikh, CEO of First Fidelity Homes added, “Making sure the properties are cheaper to own than to rent is what makes this a win for the homeowner.”
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Bulk REO investing is a great investment in this real estate recession
Bulk REO investing is a saving grace of many real estate inventors desperate to climb out of the recession hole. And with a good reason. Bulk REO is a sure way to bring in millions for pennies. All you need is nerves of steel, good guts, solid strategy and great love for what we all hold dear- money.
Love for money is a given if you take time to read this article. So are the guts if your bank account is on a ready. We will supply the strategy and nerves of steel come with practice so don’t worry about that for now.
After all, bulk REO investing all it is not much different than paying poker. With cards open. Oh yes! In Bulk REO all cards are on the table and your bank account better be on a ready. Rules are simple enough. Keep your cool, don’t expect miracles, don’t bet too high, be good for your money and for god sakes do not try to cheat- you will be caught. Play the right card at the right time and you will clean the table.
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Fed chairman says ‘unemployment will remain stubbornly high for several years’
Well you have it from the proverbial horses mouth in Ben Bernanke, our Federal Reserve Chairman. It does not bode well for the U.S. economy when the head of our central bank tells us that we should expect high unemployment for the next several years. On a political note, that is going to make this election cycle and the 2012 presidential election far from certain.
When the economy is going south, it makes it easier for a new candidate to make promises of a better economic environment even if they can not deliver. Bernanke said we will still be between 7-7.5% in 2012 for our percentage of unemployed population. We also need to take account for discouraged workers that will also come back on the rolls and possible push that statistic even higher.
This is also a best case senario, we need to take into account that a double-dip recession is not out of the cards either. I have to tip my hat to Ben for atleast giving us a realistic picture and not telling us our economy through rose colored glasses.
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HUD gives non-profits and governments 10% discount on REO properties
Housing Wire - The Department of Housing and Urban and Development (HUD) will give state and local governments and nonprofits participating in the Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) preference to buy its REO at 10% below the appraised value.
The new initiative will also give these buyers a 14-day first-look period to consider buying the property ahead of investors. HUD secretary Shaun Donovan announced the new initiative at the National Council of La Raza annual conference in San Antonio, Texas.
In May, HUD announced a third round of NSP grants in addition to the $6bn awarded since September 2008. Grantees, which include nonprofits, state and local governments, use the money to buy and rehabilitate vacant homes in an effort to grow local economies and create jobs. The money is also put toward down payment and closing-cost assistance to low- and middle-income homebuyers.
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Federal regulator investigating bonds sold to GSEs for fraud
Glad to hear something is actually being done in this area after the taxpayers have been hosed from the subprime crisis. It was not right that the loan originators basically let all lending standards go out the door to make fees while selling them to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. If they followed the standards in place then it was our fault and not their’s on a technical level.
On a moral level this was obviously not okay but that is not how we run our society, we run it on incentives and loan originators operated under the incentives that were laid out. What we need to figure out is if they did not follow those standards and committed fraud to make fees and bonuses. If so, those money needs to be recouped and any crimes need to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. We can not allow such lawless behavior in our country. If you let criminals operate with a free hand then they tend to continue to commit crimes and even bring their friends into it.
Good job on the investigations, this was a huge debacle so many more should be coming down the pipe.
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U.S. mortgage delinquency rate increases to 9.2% in May
Home mortgage delinquency rates increasing 2.3% from April and a whopping 7.9% from last year is nothing to dismiss. With unemployment benefits expiring and the temporary jobs from the census going away, we should expect this to increase from here as well.
With these trends continuing, there is a growing possibility that we will see a double-dip recession starting this fall. Politicians are aware of this and growing talk of a second stimulus package or a jobs bill to try and prevent this. This will be futile because we will just be creating more debt and the amount of GDP per dollar continues to decline.
I see the recession as a benefit in disguise if we let it takes its course and lets companies and real estate fail so we can get prices to a point where the average wages can support not just the wealthy portion of the population. Like I have said, we need to measure the wealth of our society from the base not the peak.
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Bank of America boosts staff handling troubled loans by 2,000
This is the reality for what is needed to handle this real estate crisis. We have chosen not to let people default so home will be foreclosed on and that would bring prices down across the board. We have chosen the path of modify home loans and re-writing principal balances. I still support homeowners that actually have the means to support the mortgage and we should keep them in their homes. If not then we need to face the fact that the home needs to be foreclosed and put back on the market at a fair value.
Hopefully the 18,000 employees that BofA has put in this division will help move through the massive backlog of defaulted homes they have on their books. Currently interest rates are extremely low levels so if people can refinance out of their high interest rate loan, this is the time to take advantage of this opportunity.
Bloomberg - Bank of America Corp., the second- largest U.S. home lender, added 2,000 employees since April to work with borrowers having trouble paying their mortgages, a senior executive said.
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