Mortgage Industry Ain't Helping Folks Keep Their 40 Acres, Never Mind The Mule

Foreclosure filings last month were up nearly 50% compared with a year earlier. Nationwide, 261,255 homes received at least one foreclosure-related filing in May, up 48% from 176,137 in the same month last year and up 7% from April.

Soaring foreclosures are raising questions about the mortgage industry's claims that they are making a dent in the housing crisis. The latest grim news comes as criticism mounts that the federal government and the mortgage industry is actually steming the tide of foreclosures. In fact, they aren't even close with keeping up with the rising number of troubled homeowners. Critics say a Bush administration-backed mortgage industry coalition, dubbed Hope Now, is falling far short.

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Okay, So Who's Buying Countrywide Now?

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) -- Bank of America Corp. said Tuesday its fourth-quarter earnings fell 95 percent, hurt by mounting credit losses and weak investment banking results. Why should Black folks care about this??? Well, a disturbing new report has predicted the subprime mortgage crisis will cause people of color to lose up to $213 billion, leading to the greatest loss of wealth in modern U.S. history. The figure appears in a new report from United for a Fair Economy called "Foreclosed: The State of the Dream 2008." The group accuses mortgage lenders of deliberately targeting the poor and people of color with high-cost loans.

Net income at the Charlotte-based B of A dropped to $268 million, or 5 cents per share, in the three months ended Dec. 31 from $5.26 billion, or $1.16 per share, a year ago. So how in the hell are they in a position to bail-out Countrywide???

The bank's revenue fell 32 percent to $12.67 billion from $18.49 billion last year. The quarter included results from LaSalle Bank, which Bank of America purchased on Oct. 1. NY Times has the full scoop.

BUT DAMN #241 REAL ESTATE: MOVING AND LETTING SOME OF MY STUFF GO

We found a new house, Hallelujah!
We are moving in two weeks and the packing has begun.
But Damn!!!
I can't seem to let anything go. I've even started to pack old magazines!!!

Sista it happens. Because money is tight, I myself just emptied out our paid storage we have had for four years. I pulled out of there boxes that I know I haven't opened in those same four years.

My two best friend's mother passed away and the two of them held on to the family house they grew up in. For almost two years they paid the sizable mortgage and kept the utilities on. It just sat there like a museum, a shrine to good times and a mother and father who loved them. Wow. It is rough. Is this you?

Moving can be a stressful and emotional time, especially if you are down-sizing from a home where you have raised a family. The memories alone crowd the house, never mind the actual "stuff". I came across the following tips that might be helpful for homeowners going through this type of move.

1) Focus on where you are going and what you're creating; not on what you're leaving behind. This is a new phase in your life and can be a wonderful time.

2) Be Practical, Not Sentimental. Identify the objects that you are taking with you and those that can be left behind. If there's something you are not quite ready to part with, consider TEMPORARY storage, set an end date.

3) Giving It To Someone You Love. While living in New York City, I inherited a crystal lamp. I was moving to Los Angeles and I just new it was too delicate to pack. My mind kept going forward to the agony of unpacking it and seeing it broken. I had a friend, Tom, who always admired the lamp. I gave it to him. He insisted I take something of his. In his closet he had a sleeping bag and I remembered those first nights in New York with no furniture and using my coat as a blanket. Bingo! I took the sleeping bag for my LA relocation.

4) Entertain. You may think this is the worst time to have people over, but if you surround yourself with family and friends, a support system, making it a packing party turns this difficult task into a social gathering. Just remember you label the boxes and you provide the beer after you all are done.

I'll be going through this myself in the next two years, and find that I waiver between being logical and emotional about it. I need to remind myself that it is the people that made the memories in this house, not the house itself, and we can make new and even better memories in our next house.

Thanks to Kathy Passarette, Creative Home Expressions for portions of this story

Fish Don't Fry In The Kitchen... Movin On Up To The Low Budget Part Of Town

Live In The Ghetto? Here's How To Tell

By Ms. Tricky

I thought it was important to live in the city so my family would be surrounded by diversity. It's an urban, somewhat artsy district, where diversity includes everything from race, ethnicity, religion and age, to income, education and sexual orientation.

My neighborhood has it all…. including the thin, fast-walkin’ crack head, the inappropriately-clad for Sunday morning prostitute (on her way home from work) and a small pack of juvenile bad-asses on bikes.

I purchased a new-construction home, built on a vacant lot, in the midst of century-old homes, tall, mature trees and very few garages. On the left, an older African-American couple with four adopted girls and a small cleaning business. On the right, a rental consisting of 4 to 5 White college guys. Both sides have nice people who have lived there as long as I have. We all respect each other’s property and generally have a good neighborly relationship.

That's why I was so surprised this summer when I started to have problems with some of the kids in the neighborhood. They ride over my lawn, pick my flowers, and race behind my SUV while I am backing out of the driveway.

But now that I think about it, there have been some things that have happened over the years that may indicate that I live in “the ghetto.”

Perhaps these top five things should have been red flags:

5) Waking up to police sirens multiple times a year to find about 10 squad cars parked hap-hazardly in front of your home, discussing the individual pinned down to the ground on your lawn (that’s after the chase and the tasering). Everyone from age 3 to 70 is standing outside in the snow watching.

4)Your sixty-year old neighbor engages in a screaming match (laced with expletives I've never heard strung together in a sentence) from her porch arguing with the teenager across the street (who we all know has herpes). The sixty-year old concludes her argument by pulling her pants down and mooning the teen.

3) You're in bed quietly reading one warm summer night and suddenly who hear a child ram his bike into your garage door. Although you find the child still in the driveway - slightly bewildered and sitting on a bicycle intended for someone twice his age - the kid’s parent wants proof that it was her angelic son who did $400 dollars worth of damage (‘Cause yah know, she wasn’t watchin’ him!)

2) You regularly get a knock on the door from either the toothless lawn-cutting brotha who needs a dollar to take the bus at midnight, or the cross-dresser offering to sell you a Tahari suit for five bucks.

1) The postman apparently delivers your Mary Kay catalogue to another address by mistake. By the time you get it, the free sample of lotion has been ripped out.

KENYANS REACHED FOR THE DREAM OF HOME OWNERSHIP

NAIROBI - Traipsing through the Nairobi Exhibition and Convention Center on this weekend were small-business owners, teachers, civil servants, farmers, recent college graduates and others, who make up a group of Kenyans often invisible to the outside world: neither desperately poor nor outlandishly rich but someplace in between.

On a continent where people are often trying to escape or simply survive, here were people perusing six-burner stoves who said they wished to stay, aspiring homeowners who have been fueling what amounts to a construction boom in this east African city of skyscrapers and rusted slums; leafy, moneyed neighborhoods; and lately, it seems, a thousand half-built cinder-block condominiums with pools, gyms and broadband Internet.

Although the Kenyan economy is growing at 6 percent a year, economists are uncertain whether the proliferation of new housing and accompanying mortgages reflects a growing middle class or simply a more prosperous one.

"Looking at these houses, you see a whole life," said Nicholas Kinoti, a clothing designer with his own shop, which caters to a wealthy clientele. "I thought instead of paying rent, I could adjust and pay a mortgage."

He was among dozens swarming the booth for a new development of Kansas-made prefabricated houses called Green Park, whose managing director is a former aid worker who once dealt with the Ethiopian famine.

What the rest of Stephanie McCrummen's piece? Get it at MSNBC

BUT DAMN! #230 REAL ESTATE: MEMORIAL DAY AND WE REALLY NEED TO HOUSE HUNT

It's Memorial Day weekend and we are trying to be mindful and reverent of the holiday, BUT DAMN...we need to take some time out and look for a house and after all we have three whole days off.

OK, if you must house shop this weekend or any time in the future let's arm you with a thought out plan, and 'cause you say time is premium. These 4 tips should set you straight:

1) BUY A HOME YOU CAN AFFORD!

What?! Did I hurt your feelings, was that you who said ouch?

No one likes to think about losing a job, falling victim to a major illness or getting so overwhelmed with bills that they miss a mortgage payment, or two or three.

The reluctance to plan ahead or save for tomorrow leads to this nasty statistic: 10 percent of homeowners who have a mortgage insured by the Federal Housing Authority were behind in their payments during the first three months this year. That's one out of every 10 households.

Want to make sure you don't end up as one of these sad statistics? Don't spend every last dime you have to buy a house, especially if you have no additional resources to get out of a financial jam.

2) LOOK AND ASK FOR BUYER INCENTIVES

If you don't ask, you don't get!

Tom Stevens, president of the National Association of Realtors, says home builders started offering incentives in cooling markets such as certain parts of Florida, Las Vegas, California and the Northeast. "Home builders were among the first to react with various incentive programs and promotions to help keep their properties moving and to reduce unsold inventories," he says.

While builder-incentive programs have attracted the most attention, developers aren't the only ones to offer inducements. More home sellers today are also including tempting freebies that go well beyond the usual appliances, fixtures and window treatments. Typical incentives can include assisting a buyer with closing costs, paying points, covering homeowners' association fees for a year or more, or selling the home with a comprehensive warranty.

Call city hall and check your city municipality. Certain cities are still trying to attract home buyers with grants and no cost loans, some up to $40,000. Because they realize you will be paying property tax to them, make that city the center of your buying community.

3) BUY NOW WITH NO MONEY DOWN

Hell yes! It's for real, just like ya' see on TV!

Nearly 30 percent of buyers and 45 percent of first-time buyers no longer make down payments, says the National Association of Realtors.

"Realistically, if a typical house is going for $400,000, just to do a 10 percent payment is $40,000," he says. "How many people are going to scrape together $40,000 in a reasonable amount of time? That's three years of socking away a grand a month and not having anything go wrong. That's just not realistic."

The trend raises questions about whether a looser lending standard will affect the market during a downturn. Some fear owners with none of their own money to lose may have fewer qualms about walking away from homes if they get behind on payments.

"I don't think there's a real significant problem attached to 100 percent financing per se," says Scott Thompson, a partner in Carmichael-based Mortgage Resolution Services. "The problem comes when the borrower with 100 percent financing goes beyond that and adds adjustable-rate features to it."

So there ya' go shop for that 100% financing don't add and other bells or whistles and that down payment money; well you can now put some new furniture in the crib.

4) GET YOUR PROFESSIONAL TEAM BEHIND YA!

Be prepared to fire everybody!

Yep, Realtor, Home Inspector, Mortgage person. Do not hesitate to have back-up people and back up offers offers and fire people and replace them. It's your money and after this deal closes they will not be helping you make a bad house selection a good one. Neither will they be helping you write a check for that mortgage.

THE NEW FACE OF FORECLOSURES IN CHICAGO IS BLACK AND MIDDLE CLASS

As Wall Street and fair housing advocates keep a watchful eye on the rising tide of loan defaults among the poor, a tidal wave of foreclosures is crashing ashore from the middle class.

29,000 foreclosures in the Chicago region occurred last year; the highest level of foreclosure in the last eight years, reports the Woodstock Institute.

Read more HERE.

BUT DAMN #229 I STILL THINK I CAN FLIP A HOUSE

Call me hard headed but even with all these over priced homes sitting on the market, I still think I can make some money.

Hey, people are moving every day. They gotta' live somewhere. I'm not greedy, so it doesn't have to be the "mother load." Just give me some tips so I can make the best showing I can. Okay, here's 10 things to prepare you for flipping a house:

1) Know your market. State, city, neighborhood.

2) Look for a "bad" house in a good neighborhood. A quality built home in a good area in need of TLC is an excellent consideration. Avoid homes requiring costly structural repairs.

3) Be prepared to do some of the work yourself.

4) Ya' gotta know the features that will sell a house in a hurry. If you don't know ... ya' better ask somebody ... like a good local realtor.

5) Don't ignore curb appeal.

6) Don't procrastinate, if quick money is what you are trying to do. Especially if someone makes you an offer and it is somewhere close to what ya' thought you could get.

7) Create a time line and budget before you start looking for the house.

8) Get a professional inspection.

9) Get several financing options, somebody is likely to make you mad.

10) Don't start with a high risk property especially, ya' may have to carry that mortgage a few months before you sell it.

11) Bonus!!! Know when to cut bait, get out and take a minimum loss. It happens and it shouldn't stop you from buying again. Next time you'll be smarter. Millionaires have legendary losses and mistakes and they use them as learning opportunities.

40 Acres and a Mule My Ass!

Blacks Suffer in Foreclosure Surge
3.8 times more likely to receive a higher-cost home loan

Blacks and Hispanics are more likely to get a high-cost, subprime mortgage when buying a home than whites, a major factor in a wave of foreclosures in poor, often black neighborhoods nationwide as a housing slowdown puts millions of “subprime” borrowers at risk of default.

In six major U.S. cities, black borrowers were 3.8 times more likely than whites to receive a higher-cost home loan, and Hispanic borrowers were 3.6 times more likely. In greater Boston, for example, 71 percent of blacks earning above $153,000 in 2005 took out mortgages with high interest rates, compared to just 9.4 percent of whites, while about 70 percent of black and Hispanic borrowers with incomes between $92,000 and $152,000 received high-interest rate home loans, compared to 17 percent for whites.

When the property market was strong, predatory lenders and unscrupulous brokers promised borrowers that rising prices meant they could easily remortgage their properties to keep up with payments.

This year, estimates are some 1.5 million homeowners will face foreclosure.