My backup is the home mortgage market activity as well as brokerage house earnings powered by cost-cutting.
Washington now controls long-term bond yields, promises low interest rates years into the future, makes bets on trillions of dollars in bonds, dominates the home-mortgage market and regulates myriad aspects of banking and investing in the U.S. and abroad.
For the moment, conforming mortgages remain stable and large firms unconnected to the home-mortgage market have yet to experience serious trouble.
On the demand side, the technicalities of the mortgage market are thinning the ranks of million-dollar home buyers more than usual.
The 0% down and below-market mortgage interest rates temporarily sent home prices to the moon.
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In the future, some suggest that aging boomers will force the home market to collapse even more due both to the current mortgage meltdown and changing demographics.
Home foreclosures are also up as the subprime mortgage market continues to founder, with 223, 000 reported last month versus fewer than 140, 000 in February 2007.
For insurance purposes, the replacement cost of a home is NOT the market value of the home, its purchase price or the outstanding amount of any mortgage loan.
"The Federal Reserve should exercise its authority under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act and the FTC Act to prohibit these abusive practices and products for all mortgage market participants, regardless of what kind of charter they have, " said Dodd in his opening statement.
Ms. Stewart, who previously held senior banking positions at Wachovia Corp. and later was chief executive of Morgan Stanley Private Bank NA, created an acquisition book that flags clients who might be in the market for additional services such as a home mortgage or student loan, as well as those who recently had a bad experience with the bank and need some extra care.
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The market needs to wrestle with this issue until the home mortgage debacle is finally accounted for.
In recent weeks, there have been some signs that Funding for Lending was feeding though into the mortgage market, thus helping to cut the price of home loans.
The decline in home prices in the U.S. because of high rate of foreclosures and excess inventory of housing has weighed on the mortgage market in recent years but government programs and incentives to new home buyers should help to clear excess inventory and bring back life to the U.S. housing market over time.
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Wholesale lenders competed aggressively for market share by undercutting the banks and creating sexy new mortgage products like home-equity, interest-only and low-documentation loans.
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The market overlooked the fact that a strong economy will produce more home buying and more mortgage origination.
The plan will offer qualifying borrowers a chance to cut their mortgage balances to their home's current market value.
When the mortgage market started taking off a few years ago, the longest term on a home loan was 10 years.
Stabilizing house sales, recovering mortgage applications, and improving consumer attitudes toward home purchases may be the signs of a housing market beginning to find a bottom.
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They realize the need to keep interest rates low so job-creating corporations can borrow and invest at a reasonable return, and so low mortgage rates can help work through the glut of unsold homes that will gradually get the new home market active again.
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So the idea is that if you have one of these loans, you live in the home, you're still current on the mortgage, you'll be able to keep the current interest rate, and hopefully, in a couple of three years, when the housing market settles and more credit is flowing into the housing market, you'll be able to refinance into another mortgage and stay in the home.
First Magnus, the 16th-largest U.S. home lender, said Thursday it would stop making mortgage loans because it can't find buyers in the mortgage securities market to get them off its balance sheet.
Other figures from the Bank of England showed that the stock of mortgage debt owed by UK home owners has continued to hover at record levels, despite the stagnation of the property market since the credit crunch started in 2007.
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