Continue Reading Add comment December 23rd, 2008
The number of existing homes sold during November plummeted 8.6% as prices plunged by record amounts, according to a closely watched housing industry report issued Tuesday. Read more »
Continue Reading Add comment December 23rd, 2008
Guest blog from BusinessWeek Banking and Finance Editor Mara Der Hovanesian:
The mortgage brokers and the government are at each other’s throats again. As soon as the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued rules on Nov. 17 about disclosing how brokers are compensated, the brokers’ main trade group cried foul and filed a lawsuit.
A copy of the mortgage brokers’ lawsuit can be found here, embedded in the National Association of Mortgage Brokers’ Dec. 19 press release.
The gist of the new ruling is disclosure: As part of a slew of mortgage reforms, HUD wants third-party brokers to reveal to homeowners just what their broker is getting paid for helping them with the loan. And the gist of the lawsuit is that brokers don’t want to operate under different rules from those for other lending officers that are employed directly by the bank. For a copy of the HUD rule look here.
This battle has been going on for a decade. Brokers claim that they do lots of heavy lifting for potential homeowners to get them into a home–especially those with few resources to pull together for down payments and closing costs. Brokers can help finance these costs through what the industry calls “yield spread premiums,” or commissions they earn that are paid by the ultimate lender or financer of the loan, either a traditional bank (or in the boom years, Wall Street). These sorts of commissions and deals are not struck with employees of the firms and so bank employees are not subject to HUD’s new disclosure rule.
In many of the interest-only and other wildly popular low-cost loans of the last housing boom, almost all of a mortgage broker’s commission compensation came from the YSP. But some officials and class-action lawyers think that the YSP is a violation of lending laws because it constitutes a kickback, which is illegal. Brokers say that the fees they get are permissible because they are earned for hard work.
The problem is that many of the low-cost loans that mortgage brokers helped to originate in the past few years are exactly the loans that are in the worst shape these days. NAMB president Marc Savitt argues that the new ruling hampers small business in America because it will be onerous for these independent agents to comply with the law.
The mortgage brokers and Savitt need to get with the program. Everybody under the sun associated with the mortgage lending business will be under far more scrutiny and regulation going forward, and for obvious good reason.
Continue Reading Add comment December 23rd, 2008
My friend Bill is always complaining that he should have stayed in the Army. He would have had such a better life, cared for by the government, he says. Now in his 40s, he lives in his parents home again in Boston. Then I got the notice from a company called Balfour Beatty Communities, a private sector company which manages residential units on military bases. That’s one of their properites in Fort Eustis, Virginia above and Jacksonville below. Wow!
Expanded construction budgets have greatly improved family housing at many military bases, the press release read. It went on: At Marne Point, a garden-style apartment community that will be Balfour Beatty’s first apartment complex to provide military housing for single soldiers, the $37 million complex feature private bedrooms and baths, full kitchens, and living rooms. Every apartment has a private entranceway, and is equipped with a walk-in storage closet and washer and dryer. Nine-foot ceilings provide an open, airy feel. Marne Point will also include a community and recreation center with a clubhouse, full basketball court, heated pool, car wash station, and running trails.
Maybe my friend Bill was right.
Continue Reading Add comment December 23rd, 2008
At Naval Base San Diego, Clark Realty Capital and the Department of the Navy opened the doors of Pacific Beacon (pictured), the first of three 18-story luxury apartment buildings in the country’s first large-scale housing privatization initiative for unmarried military personnel.
Continue Reading Add comment December 23rd, 2008
Sacramento County’s supervisory board has unanimously approved the final environmental impact report for GenCorp Inc.’s 1,400-acre mixed-use project and amendments to the county’s general plan for the project.
Continue Reading Add comment December 23rd, 2008
KBS REIT II has acquired a 142,000-square-foot office building in San Jose, Calif., for $35.7 million. The property, located at 350 East Plumeria Dr., is fully-leased to Netgear Inc., a designer and developer of networking software, which houses its headquarters in the building.
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