On a hill high above Cleveland, Tennessee, stands a manor modeled after George Vanderbilt’s Biltmore. A stone-and-stucco pile topped by a copper dome, the house is perched on a 650-acre (263-hectare) estate that features two artificial lakes, a regulation-sized football field and a three- story tree house, plus stables, a greenhouse and an aviary. If this sounds [...]

consumers, credit, housing loans, US Hide

March 29 (Bloomberg) — China’s banking regulator ordered lenders to take more care when making real-estate loans, widening efforts to prevent property speculators from causing asset bubbles and bad debt. Banks should not lend to developers found by state agencies to have held land without building houses, the government said in a statement posted online late on [...]

China, credit, housing, housing loans Hide

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 [...]

debt, fannie, freddie, housing, housing loans, subprime, US Hide

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 [...]

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. [...]

credit, debt, housing loans, Singapore Hide

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 [...]

China, housing, housing loans Hide

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 [...]

debt, housing loans, subprime, US Hide

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 [...]

bailout, credit, fannie, freddie, housing loans, subprime, US Hide

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 [...]

foreclosure, housing crisis, housing loans, mortgage, mortgage modification, US Hide

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 [...]

citi, housing loans, Huntington, losses, Marshall & Ilsley, S&P 500, shares, stock market, US Hide