Rep. Barney Frank is once again pushing a mortgage relief program to assist the growing number of homeowners who find themselves without a job - now the primary driver behind mortgage defaults. Under his proposal, some of the $12 billion that the Treasury has gotten back from banks for TARP bailouts would be used to issue low-interest emergency loans to unemployed homeowners who are struggling to make their mortgage payments. While most lawmakers are calling for TARP to expire at year-end, Frank says he would support an extension if it included provisions for jobless homeowners.
Home prices have plummeted across the country since the onset of the housing crisis, but according to First American CoreLogic, the rate at which property values are dropping has slowed and returned to what could be called a normal seasonal pattern. The company says national home prices, including distressed sales, declined by 9.8 percent in September compared to a year ago. Looking forward, First American CoreLogic's forecast calls for housing prices to bottom for most markets by March 2010 and then turn positive.
The U.S. Department of the Treasury is putting stock warrants it received for investments made in several large banks on the auction block. Treasury obtained warrants through the capital injections it provided to financial institutions nearly a year ago under the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). While the Department has worked directly with other banks to negotiate buy-back prices for their warrants, it was unable to reach an agreement over the value of the warrants from J.P. Morgan, Capital One, and TCF Financial. The Treasury's warrant positions in these three institutions will be sold at public auctions over the next month.
According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), a record number of loans are delinquent, and 1 in 22 families in the United States is in the process of losing their home. Based on these figures, the Center for Responsible Lending says the industry is on track for 2.9 million foreclosure starts in this year alone.
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