The Great Bailout is mostly over for the banks. But for those troubled behemoths of the nation’s housing bust, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the lifeline from Washington just keeps getting longer.
Fifteen months after Fannie [FNM  1.01   -0.02  (-1.94%)   ] and Freddie [FRE  1.21  -0.02  (-1.63%)   ] were effectively nationalized, neither the Obama administration nor Congressional leaders see a quick solution to one of the [...]

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For Singaporeans looking to invest in property, the home market is just one option.
Ms Jacqueline Wong, head of residential at Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL), says that as prime residential properties in Singapore become more expensive, investing overseas becomes an affordable option.
This year, investors may want to venture further – particularly to Britain and Australia, cited [...]

housing, housing loans, investments, UK Hide

I REFER to last Monday’s report, ‘Moneylenders target HDB sellers‘, which mentioned that ‘agents…introduce desperate sellers to moneylenders, and may get a fee for the referral, usually about $500 a customer’.
The Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies does not support the practice of estate agents obtaining referral fees from moneylenders for introducing their clients to them.
Estate agents [...]

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BEIJING, Jan 14, 2010 (AFP) – Property prices in Chinese cities continued to soar in December, rising at the fastest pace in 17 months, official figures released Thursday showed.
Property prices in 70 medium and large cities increased by 7.8 percent in the last month of 2009 from a year earlier, and 1.5 percent from November, [...]

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Thousands of American homeowners are starting to see their monthly mortgage payments skyrocket, dealing a fresh blow to the already shaky housing recovery.

The widely feared reset of thousands of option adjustable-rate mortgages—where both interest and principal payments rise sharply—is already leaving many homeowners struggling to keep a roof over their head.
“It’s going to kill off [...]

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At a hearing last fall, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told lawmakers that he and his team were working to put the $700 billion financial bailout fund “out of its misery.” But some in Washington now see a second, backdoor bailout in its place.
On Dec. 24, the Obama administration announced it was extending an unlimited [...]

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The Obama administration’s $75 billion program to protect homeowners from foreclosure has been widely pronounced a disappointment, and some economists and real estate experts now contend it has done more harm than good.
Since President Obama announced the program in February, it has lowered mortgage payments on a trial basis for hundreds of thousands of people [...]

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Citigroup Inc., Marshall & Ilsley Corp. and Huntington Bancshares Inc. ended 2009 with the biggest drops in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, weighed down by defaulting property loans that may add to their declines this year.
Marshall & Ilsley tumbled 60 percent, the index’s biggest drop, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Huntington Bancsharesfell 52 [...]

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