They Warned Us About the Mortgage Crisis (BusinessWeek Online)
BusinessWeek Online - More than five years ago, in April 2003, the attorneys general of two small states traveled to Washington with a stern warning for the nation's top bank regulator. Sitting in the spacious Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, with its panoramic view of the capital, the AGs from North Carolina and Iowa said lenders were pushing increasingly risky mortgages. Their host, John D. Hawke Jr., expressed skepticism. More »
A Wild Time To Buy A Home, But Some Are Answering The Call (Investor's Business Daily)
Investor's Business Daily - Housing could be in for more bruising despite rescue efforts, as bank balance sheets teeter, and if world financial and economic fears are realized. The risks include further falls in home prices and the prospect of more Americans facing foreclosure. More »
Hardwood Flooring Retailer Nails Down Profits In A Tough Market (Investor's Business Daily)
Investor's Business Daily - The home mortgage business is in crisis. Residential building is down. Hardwood flooring sales fell 5% last year, and retail is in the tank. More »
Obama calls McCain mortgage plan ill-advised (AP)
AP - Democrat Barack Obama told Ohio voters Thursday that Republican John McCain's mortgage buyout plan would cost them billions of dollars and reward bad behavior by lenders. More »
Sheriff in Chicago halts foreclosure evictions (Reuters)
Reuters - The sheriff of the third-most populous U.S. county halted evictions on foreclosed properties on Thursday, saying innocent tenants were being put on the street. But bankers said he was breaking the law. More »
Obama slams 'risky' McCain mortgage plan (AFP)
AFP - Barack Obama slammed John McCain's plan to buy up 300 billion dollars in bad mortgages as "risky" on Thursday, and warned his White House rival was offering "erratic" leadership at a time of crisis. More »
Obama attacks McCain mortgage bailout plan (Reuters)
Reuters - Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama accused Republican John McCain on Thursday of backing a mortgage bailout plan that would reward banks responsible for the U.S. housing crisis, as he sought to press a perceived advantage on economic issues. More »
Economy - Wednesday (Investor's Business Daily)
Investor's Business Daily - Home loan demand rose 2.2% in the week ended Oct. 3, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's index. Mortgage applications for buying a home rose 3.2% -- from the prior week's 6-year low -- with the Federal Housing Administration continuing to gain market share. Refinancing activity edged up 0.9%. The average rate on a 30-year fixed-rate loan fell to 5.99% from 6.07%. The rate on a 15-year fixed mortgage decreased to 5.71%, the lowest in three weeks. A one-year ARM dipped to 6.6%. More »
Obama rejects McCain's plan to buy mortgages (AP)
AP - Democrat Barack Obama's campaign criticized John McCain's mortgage bailout plan Wednesday, saying it would cause the government to lose money by paying too much for bad loans. More »
McCain mortgage buyout too expensive : Obama (AFP)
AFP - Barack Obama's campaign on Wednesday rejected John McCain's plan to buy up 300 billion dollars of bad home loans clogging the US economy as too expensive and an example of "erratic" leadership. More »
McCain pushes $300 billion mortgage plan (Reuters)
Reuters - White House hopeful John McCain pitched a $300 billion plan to help struggling homeowners on Wednesday as he tried to erode an advantage held by Democratic rival Barack Obama on economic issues. More »
Obama rejects McCain's plan to buy mortgages (AP)
AP - Democrat Barack Obama 's campaign criticized John McCain's mortgage bailout plan Wednesday, saying it would cause the government to lose money by paying too much for bad loans. More »
Chicago's Cook County won't evict in foreclosures (AP)
AP - The sheriff here said Wednesday that he's ordering his deputies to stop evicting people from foreclosed properties because many people his office has helped throw out on the street are renters who did nothing wrong. More »
McCain housing proposal: Easier said than done (AP)
AP - Ordering the government to buy up bad mortgages to cut homeowners' monthly payments might sound good, but experts are skeptical. They say the plan John McCain is promoting is unlikely to solve the housing crisis that's pushing the economy toward recession. More »
Citi shrinks U.S. mortgage broker business (Reuters)
Reuters - Citigroup Inc will cut 500 mortgage-related jobs and slash by 90 percent the number of independent mortgage brokers it works with, the company said, as the U.S. mortgage industry broadly shrinks amid the housing crisis. More »
UBS pulls plug on Mortgage Strategist, ABS trading (Reuters)
Reuters - UBS AG is halting its widely read weekly mortgage strategy report after more than 15 years of publication as the bank broadly scales down in the home loan business, including the closure of its asset-backed securities group, sources said. More »
Wall Street panic rolling over consumers worldwide (Reuters)
Reuters - A London businessman may have to put off his wedding. A baker in Paris fears customers will disappear. A student in Slovenia sees an automobile loan fall out of reach. And a real estate agent in Chicago says she's just plain scared. More »
Pending home sales up 7.4 percent in August (AP)
AP - Pending home sales rose 7.4 percent from July to August, an unexpected piece of positive news for the battered U.S. housing market. More »
August pending home sales jump 7.4 percent: NAR (Reuters)
Reuters - Pending sales of existing U.S. homes unexpectedly jumped in August to the highest in over a year, data from a real estate trade group showed on Wednesday. More »
IndyMac's Fast-Track Mortgage Modification Program (BusinessWeek Online)
BusinessWeek Online - When Mark Akers got an offer from his mortgage lender in September to slash his monthly payments down to $2,500, from $4,200, he jumped at the chance. The Norco (Calif.) resident ran into trouble earlier this year after his wife got sick and he lost his job managing a factory that made doors for houses. The 53-year-old Akers could have become another foreclosure statistic if his bank, IndyMac, had not stepped forward to halve the interest rate on his fixed-rate loan to 3%, for a period of five years. ... More »
Gate Towers contract awarded
Arab Construction Company has been awarded a Dhs6.2bn contract to build six of the eight towers at the Gate Towers project at the entrance to Shams Abu Dhabi on Al Reem Island. Piling work will begin immediately with construction scheduled to start in Q1 2009. More »
DIFC invests Dhs3bn in Dubai Pearl
Dubai DIFC Investments, the investment arm of the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC), has announced that it has invested more than Dhs3bn ($817m) in the Dubai Pearl project. The investment was made through DIFC Investments' real estate fund, which was launched recently to tap into the booming property sector in Dubai and the UAE. The multi-billion dirham fund seeks to create a portfolio of quality real estate acquisitions that will yield positive return on equity as the property sector continues to grow. More »
ME property market to be world's best performer
Middle East real estate markets will outperform other regions of the world over the next two years, according to a new survey by Jones Lang LaSalle, the commercial property broker. Based on responses from over 350 developers, sovereign wealth funds and high net worth investors, the survey also found that almost half of all respondents believe the UAE will offer the best performing real estate market in the Middle East over the next 1 - 2 years, with Saudi Arabia to be the next best performer. More »
Dubai construction valued at $6.4bn
The Oxford Business Group has released its 2008 Middle East real estate report. The report noted that developers planned to release and additional 224,000 units in Dubai in the period through to the end of 2009. The construction industry was valued at an estimated $6.4bn in Dubai in 2007. More »
Abyaar rebrands, launches Pier 8 sales
Kuwaiti property developer Abyaar has unveiled its new corporate logo at Cityscape Dubai. The branding takes the form of a signature that will be on all the company's marketing and advertising campaigns. Abyaar also launched sales of units in its Pier 8 development in Dubai Marina, with asking prices averaging Dhs2,750 per square foot. More »