Are you in trouble? You may be getting help from a highly unusually source: Your mortgage insurace company.

Usually, people go to housing counseling services that may help them negotiate more affordable terms on their home mortgage. However, the large number of people that need help in this area has made access to these services difficult. Continue reading Private Mortgage Insurers Help Keep Mortgage

This is particularly good news. It seems that securities that are currently backed by mortgages closed up a few points higher. What did that mean for the rest of the market? It meant that some lenders had to reprice, for the greater good. Although it didn’t seem to move this morning. Mortgage backed securities rates are about the same today and yesterday’s. Conventional mortgages should rate at around 4.75 to 5, just check your local broker or shop around for some lenders.

Continue reading Mortgage Backed Securities Up a few Points

There is a lot of speculation and anticipation in the market in the past weeks about the new Troubled Asset Relief Program. Ideas such as the creation of “bad banks” and the nationalization of banks that avail of it have been tossed around. However, one strong reassurance from the Obama administration that this plan contains ideas that work to loosen the money from the banks’ tight fisted grip and get the credit market moving again.

One early concept was the idea of the “bad bank” that would acquire the toxic mortgage assets from other banks’ balance sheets. This would help the banks get rid of assets that would otherwise remain illiquid and this make banks more comfortable with providing credit to consumers. Right now, it’s a balance between hurting the taxpayers or not helping the bank enough.

Another idea being speculated on is an asset insurance plan, an approach that has been adopted by the Bank of America and Citigroup. In this concept, banks would absorb some losses initially and then pass later potential losses to the government. This then acts more like a traditional private mortgage insurance.

President Obama has said previously that he intends to have up to a hundred billion dollars earmarked for forclosure prevention under a foreclosure assistance program.
as soon as possible.

From Bloomberg dated February 5:

Citigroup Inc. has agreed to sell it’s billing and collections rights for 185,000 mortgages to the American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc of Wilbur Ross. In return, Citigorup will get $1.5 billion, this is according to an e-mailed statement of the Irving, Texas-basd American Home. This transaction includes rights to mortgage servicing fees and also the temporary advances that Citigroup had made on behalf of delinquent borrowers to mortgage investors.

Despite this, there will be no material impact on overall results.

This transaction helps the company towards closing out the Citi Residential Lending which was a unit that was created when the bank bought the mortgage-servicing rights of ACC Capital Holdings, which amounts to 45 billion dollars. Afterwards, the bank consolidated it’s mortgage operations and decided to wind down Citi Residential Lending.

Citigroup rose 4 cents to $3.53 at 4:15 p.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. The shares are down 47 percent this year.