The continued availability of government guaranteed mortgages for rural homebuyers was virtually assured yesterday when the House Financial Services Committee voted to approve H.R. 5017. The unanimous vote will send the Rural Housing Preservation and Stabilization Act of 2010 to the full House of Representatives where sources said it was fast tracked for a vote as early as next week.
If passed, the bill will correct the Section 502 Single Family Housing Guaranteed Loan Program to make it self-funding. Section 502 assists homebuyers living in rural areas to obtain affordable mortgages guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture (USDA). These loan guarantees have become enormously popular during the financial crisis and consumer demand has tripled the annual number of loans that are typically issued each year. The program is set to exhaust its available funds within days. Under the new legislation, lenders will pay up to a 4 percent premium for the guarantee at the time the loan is initiated which will enable the financing of the program to move from a combination of government funding and industry fees to a self-sustaining initiative. The bill authorizes the department to guarantee up to $30 billion in loans in FY 2010.
Existing home sales increased by 6.8% in March, 2010, with home buyers surging to get a tax credit that expires in April, according to a real estate industry report released Thursday.
The National Association of Realtors reported that existing home sales rose last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.35 million units, up from the revised rate of 5.01 million in February. Sales year-over-year were up 16.1%.
Home resales have been above year-ago levels for nine straight months, according to the report.
“Buoyed by the unseasonably warm weather, home owners were out en masse scooping-up bargain-priced real estate,” said Bob Walters, chief economist at Quicken Loans, in a research note.
In its February report, NAR said winter storms hurt figures for the month.
First-time home buyers can qualify for a tax credit of up to $8,000, while those who are trading up could get as much as $6,500. In both cases, buyers have to sign contracts by the end of April and close the deal before July 1 in order to get the credit.
Legislators have twice extended the deadline to obtain the tax credit, but a further extension is not expected by experts.
The NAACP has dropped its racial discrimination lawsuit against Wells Fargo.
“Wells Fargo and the NAACP have agreed to work constructively on ways to improve fair credit access, sustainable home ownership and financial literacy for communities of color and other historically disadvantaged communities,” Wells Fargo and the NAACP said in a joint press release.
The NAACP said that Wells Fargo (WFC, Fortune 500) is just one of 14 financial institutions that it has sued since 2007 over allegations that these companies violated the Fair Housing and Equal Credit Opportunity acts. The other firms include JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), Citibank (C, Fortune 500) and HSBC.
JPMorgan Chase spokeswoman Christine Holevas and HSBC spokeswoman Kate Durham both declined to comment.
Citibank spokesman Mark Rodgers said, in an e-mail, that his company considers each applicant “by the same objective criteria, which are blind to race, ethnicity, gender and any other prohibited means. These objective criteria include credit scores, loan to value ratios, debt to income and other key factors.”
He said this allows Citibank “to set rates that are consistent with the risk profile of each borrower.”
The lawsuits, filed in U.S. District Court in central California, accused the financial firms of giving subprime rates — meaning higher interest rates — to African-Americans who qualified for better rates.
Last year, Twitter CEO Evan Williams tweeted “Buy my loft…It’s a steal!” at the asking price of $1.5 million. The listing went viral, and a buyer recently bought the San Francisco penthouse for just $1.25 million. Williams and his wife, Sara Morishige, had listed their two-bedroom, two-bath San Francisco loft for sale on Sept. 25 for $1,498,000, just $2,000 less than what they paid for it two and a half years earlier. But with prices plummeting everywhere, they had to sell the abode for 17% less than they paid.
The original asking price did include some of their furniture, including the couch, because it didn’t “necessarily fit the feeling of [their] new house,” said the loft’s listing agent, Eric Turner of McGuire Real Estate. While the couch was not included in the final sale, the buyer did get two side-by-side parking spots and remote controlled blinds.
The 1,792-square-foot penthouse is located in San Francisco’s SoMA district in the historic concrete Heublein Building. Real estate agents, like Turner, sell the former wine warehouse as offering a Manhattan vibe with cityscape views. “The building is unique because it blends the old historical feel but is updated and has a really nice subtle contemporary feel,” said Turner.
The Heublein was converted in 1990 and offers two units with large private patios. The penthouse is one of them.