Thirty-Year Mortgage Rate Hits Record Lows - Bespoke Investment Group

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Mortgage Bond Prices Rise to ‘Insane’ Records: Credit Markets - By Jody Shenn - Mortgage securities with U.S.-backed guarantees are trading at record high prices on speculation homeowner refinancing will fail to accelerate and as supply of the bonds remains limited.  The average price of $5.2 trillion of bonds guaranteed by government-supported Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or federal agency Ginnie Mae climbed to 106.3 cents on the dollar yesterday, according to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Mortgage Master Index. That’s up from 104.2 cents on March 31, when the Federal Reserve ended its program purchasing $1.25 trillion of the debt. ... - Bloomberg

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Fannie Mae Increases Penalties for Borrowers Who Walk Away - /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Fannie Mae announced today policy changes designed to encourage borrowers to work with their servicers and pursue alternatives to foreclosure.  Defaulting borrowers who walk-away and had the capacity to pay or did not complete a workout alternative in good faith will be ineligible for a new Fannie Mae-backed mortgage loan for a period of seven years from the date of foreclosure. Borrowers who have extenuating circumstances may be eligible for new loan in a shorter timeframe. - Yahoo Finance

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Taxpayer-Owned Fannie Mae Attacks Struggling Homeowners - Shahien Nasiripour - Huffington Post
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Generation Lowers Fixed Rate Reverse Mortgage Below 5% - Generation Mortgage announced a new 4.99% fixed rate reverse mortgage product it’s offering to both wholesale and retail customers. - Reverse Mortgage Daily

Court Rules Reverse Mortgage of Deceased Mother Can Be Paid Off in Bankruptcy - A South Carolina Bankruptcy court decision by the Honorable John E. Waites, Chief Bankruptcy Judge, found the entire balance of a reverse mortgage could be paid off over the five year life of a chapter 13 plan according to Law Bankruptcy Network. - has details - Reverse Mortgage Daily

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Deutsche Bank Ranks Servicers on Speed of Short Sales- by JON PRIOR - has a list - HousingWire

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Most Affordable Cities To Buy A Home - Francesca Levy - Buying and owning is a good deal in these metros. - has list - Forbes

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Housing Collapse Intensifies - This one's going to leave a mark: ... lots more thoughts - Housing Time Bomb

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(FX:) Horrific U.S. New Home Sales Signal Risk Reduction - Marc Chandler - The 32.7% decline in new homes sales to a new cyclical low has actually sparked a bout of dollar and yen buying on risk aversion. The revisions to the March and April time series also point to a much weaker picture than we had.  The dollar had already turned better bid before the news as the equity market failed to hold initial gains, but the news has seen the dollar's rise accelerate. - Seeking Alpha

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Former Fannie Mae Exec Edward Pinto Slams The "Numbing Complexity" Of HAMP - Gus Lubin - Since quitting Fannie Mae in the late eighties, former chief credit officer Edward Pinto has become a vocal critic of government programs that pump up the housing bubble. Today at Congress he slammed HAMP for keeping less than half of a promised 3-to-4 million homeowners from default. - Clusterstock at Business Insider

Here's Why Fannie Mae's War On Defaulters Is A Joke - Bruce Krasting - Clusterstock at Business Insider

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Fannie Mae: Walk Away and You Will Pay - By: Diana Olick - ...  I'm wondering why they haven't been doing that all along?  My guess is they simply don't have the legal resources available to handle such a huge job...which brings me to my final thought:  If the mortgage walk-away issue is big enough for Fannie Mae to get this tough, then why have Administration officials been telling me over and over that "it's just not that big an issue."  Seriously, I've done several interviews over the past year, bringing it up over and over, and they just seem to want to sweep it under the rug. ... - CNBC

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interesting math exercise - Bounding the Price Impact of the New Home Buyer Credit - Casey Mulligan - The IRS says that $19 billion of tax credits have been paid. Assume, for the moment, that: ... Regardless of whether the price impact was $400 or $4000, the fact is that housing prices and construction activity stopped falling a year ago, and it is a wild exaggeration to claim that the pattern would have been much different without the new home buyer tax credit. ... - Supply and Demand .. in that order 

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(Deeds In Lieu) -  Kenneth Harney: Foreclosure alternative gaining favor - Short sales have been the hot solution for financially stressed homeowners and their lenders for the past year, but here's another potent foreclosure alternative that's about to take center stage: deeds in lieu. - Washington Post

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lots of thoughts - Inane Thoughts of the Day: CNNMoney Article says "Housing Shortage is Coming"; Coldwell Banker CEO says Now is the "Absolute Best Time" to Buy a Home - Michael Shedlock - MISH'S Global Economic Trend Analysis