http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com Your personal tour guide through the housing finance "misinformation maze". Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:20:16 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en This should be the first you hear of July foreclosure data from any source. Each month I do a foreclosure report for the state of CA.  CA makes up roughly 35% of the total unit count and 40-45% of the total dollar volume of all foreclosures in the nation.  ForeclosureRadar supplies the best ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/07/record-foreclosures-sweep-ca-in-july-breaking-news/ June Pending Home Sales were up!  Not really. They were at near the same level in April, took a dip in May and went back to April's level in June (see chart below).  June is one of the best sales months of the year and April is not.  June pendings only being flat from April ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/07/pending-home-sales-number-actually-worse-explained/ I have been preaching that the 'Pay Option Implosion'  will make the 'Subprime Implosion' look like a hiccup in states in which this loan program was widely used such as CA. This is because this loan program knows no socio-economic boundaries and was very heavy used in more affluent areas ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/05/pay-option-arms-up-to-48-default-rate-first-federal-featured/ Just one week after S&P placed over 1600 Alt-A RMBS on downgrade review (final downgrades likely within a few days), Moody's and Fitch get into the act by actually downgrading hundreds of Alt-A RMBS, most issued by the nations largest banks.  One of my favorite sites, Mortgage Daily, tracked all the deals. One thing ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/04/moodys-fitch-absolutely-hammer-alt-a-rmbs-from-nearly-every-bank/ There could be a big problem brewing for the housing market. One that many may have not considered.  Could a large portion of the purchase market and a good chunck of Fannie and Freddie's loan production in four states with the largest housing markets ride with two of the smaller sized mortgage insurers? MGIC, following in the footsteps of most ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/04/mgic-reduces-mortgage-insurance-ltvs-in-ca-nv-az-and-fl-futher-pressuring-housing-market/ Following in the footsteps of so many other mortgage-heavy banks, Chase is quietly scaling back their residential mortgage business chosing to rely more heavily on Fannie and Freddie.  This is not the exception, this is the rule now. Mortgage lending choices have all but dried up and when that happens and fewer companies ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/03/chase-quietly-scaling-back-mortgage-lending/ Cramer was being heralded last week for being the only one that predicted the financials meltdown from the beginning due to one 6-minute CNBC segment (the 'Rant').  This clip has somehow overshadowed hundreds of money losing calls and incorrect predictions (see lower half of post) of a 'bottom' over the past year ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/02/cramer-the-only-one-who-got-it-right-all-along/ This is a very quick and good read. I will dig into it more later because there are some parts I would like to extrapolate on, but for now here is the link. http://online.barrons.com/article/SB121763156934206007.html? For those of you without a Barron's subsrciption, go to TickerForums... http://www.tickerforum.org/cgi-ticker/akcs-www?post=54998 http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/08/02/barrons-roubini-predicting-2-trillion-in-debt-related-losses/ Although this story is Bank of America-specific, most large banks such as Wells, Chase and CITI are running scared of their Home Equity Line/Loan exposure due to the sheer size of their portfolios, the high risk of default across all borrower grades and the low probability of recovery. The Journal wrote ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/07/31/is-bank-of-america-behind-the-heloc-risk-curve/ By the way, they lost SEVEN TIMES this in Q2 alone. Nobody BOUGHT $500 million in stock (they actually paid much more than that!) I chose the headline for the story to get more people to read the real stories herein. This 'investor' now owns around $500 million at today's price, but this ... http://mrmortgage.ml-implode.com/2008/07/31/brittish-hedgefund-buys-500-million-in-wamu-stockso/