• Can we restart the housing market with down-payment insurance?

    Updated: 2012-01-31 20:10:50
    That’s the idea economist James A. Wilcox, a professor of business at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote about recently in the New York Times. “Homebuyers could purchase protection from the government for a one-time fee, say 1 percent of the house purchase price, or $2,000 on a house selling for $200,000,” wrote Wilcox. “The fee [...]

  • Fed intentions revealed. Here’s what they mean to you

    Updated: 2012-01-30 17:24:28
    The Federal Reserve kicked off its new strategy of clearer communications at the close of January’s Open Market Committee meeting last Wednesday afternoon. With just a few words, plus some charts (page 3), the Fed now expects to keep interest rates “extraordinarily low” for a period up to 18 months longer than the mid-2013 estimate [...]

  • 10 things I learned from my evacuation

    Updated: 2012-01-27 21:24:21
    If you live in an area prone to natural disasters, you’ll probably have to evacuate your home someday. Last year, 2.5 million folks were ordered out when Hurricane Irene neared the East Coast. Thousands were told to leave Texas in 2011 as 180 wildfires broke out across the state. And even the White House evacuated [...]

  • Does mortgage insurance hurt my chances of a HARP refinance?

    Updated: 2012-01-26 23:03:55
    On Tuesday, blog.HSH.com reader Diana wrote in with the following comment: I have perfect credit, have never been late on a payment, have a low debt-to-income ratio, but I can’t qualify for HARP because I currently have mortgage insurance. WTF? Is this a way to get people to buy mortgage insurance? I am so confused by [...]

  • Is another refinance plan on its way?

    Updated: 2012-01-25 18:25:25
    If you were among the many watching the president’s State of the Union address last evening, chances are you didn’t even realize President Obama hinted at a new refinance plan. In fact, the word “refinance” didn’t even appear in the president’s speech. The term “refinancing” was only mentioned once. “And that’s why I’m sending this Congress [...]

  • The FHA is on the rebound, but changes are needed

    Updated: 2012-01-24 16:25:37
    Is the FHA really in peril? The American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a conservative think tank, apparently thinks so. “No serious observer of the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) believes its financial future is bright,” writes Peter J. Wallison and Edward J. Pinto in a recent market outlook titled, “Bet the house: why the FHA is going (for) [...]

  • 4 signs housing in on the mend (finally!)

    Updated: 2012-01-23 16:54:24
    Low and stable mortgage rates and a modestly improving economy are starting to produce positive effects on the nation’s housing market. While starting from extraordinarily low levels, and though improvement is still of course tenuous, there have been accumulating signs of improvement for months. If the economy can continue to nudge forward for a while longer [...]

  • Our expert answers your blog questions

    Updated: 2012-01-20 16:27:04
    Over the last few days we’ve had an influx of good comments come into the blog. I enlisted Keith Gumbinger, vice president of HSH.com and 25-year observer of the mortgage and real estate markets, to answer some of the recent questions we received. 1. The first question comes from Rick who commented on the post “Update [...]

  • Automated valuation models could be understating your home’s value

    Updated: 2012-01-19 17:52:01
    The use of automated valuation models (AVMs) can make it faster, easier and cheaper for mortgage lenders to value your home. But do they understate your home’s value and will they cost you money? Heads up! If you plan to take out a home equity loan, know that the way your lender determines your home’s value could [...]

  • Mortgage rates find new room to drop, set new record low

    Updated: 2012-01-18 21:49:45
    Sometimes one basis point can make all the difference. According to HSH.com’s latest Weekly Mortgage Rate Radar, the average rate for conforming 30-year fixed-rate mortgages fell by 1 basis point (0.01 percent) to 4.02 percent, a tiny drop that was nonetheless sufficient to produce yet another new record low. The average rate for conforming 5/1 hybrid [...]

  • Judy Greenwald quotes me in her Business Insurance article, “Cloud computing risks generally covered by cyber insurance.”

    Updated: 2012-01-17 18:12:13
    In her article, Cloud computing risks generally covered by cyber insurance, Business Insurance author Judy Greenwald writes about cloud computing and whether risks associated with the cloud might be covered by cyber insurance. The article opens: Insurance coverage for cloud users generally falls under firms’ cyber risk policies, observers say. That’s because cyber policy language generally is broad enough to cover [...]

  • “2012 Data Privacy and Information Security Predictions”

    Updated: 2012-01-04 18:41:42
    My friend, Christine Marciano, who is President, Cyber Data Risk Managers, just released her 2012 Data Privacy and Information Security Predictions. The report is an interesting series of predictions on what 2012 will hold in the areas of privacy and cyber risks. Here is how Christine describes the report: This is our first Data Privacy [...]

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