Current Housing Indicators |
| CURRENT | PREVIOUS | ||
| Existing Home Sales | 4.49m | ▼ | 4.74m |
| New Home Sales | 309,000 | ▼ | 344,000 |
| Housing Starts | 583,000 | ▲ | 477,000 |
| Building Permits | 547,000 | ▲ | 531,000 |
| HMI | 9 | UNCH | 9 |
| Existing Home Prices | $170,300 | ▼ (annually) | $199,800 |
| New Home Prices | $201,100 | ▼ (annually) | $232,400 |
More Videos
- Housing Recovery 'Still In Uncharted Territory': HUD Secretary
- Shadow Inventory Dwarfs Loan Mods
- The Battered Businesses Behind Housing
- Watch Foreclosures, Seriously
- Home Buyer Tax Credit Expansion Heads to Obama
- Congratulations America, We're All Landlords Now
- Wells Fargo Bets on Housing Recovery
- Home Buyer Tax Credit Done: Does it Matter?
- Better Times for Mortgage Banking
- 'Beleaguered Big Builders' Sitting On Piles of Cash
MOST SHARED
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates Share Their 'Optimism' With Eager Columbia Business Students
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- Pharma & Social Media
- Warren Buffett's $100,000 Offer and $500,000 Advice for Columbia Business School Students
- Disney Profit, Sales Top Street Forecasts; Shares Jump
- China Fourth Quarter Growth Could Hit 10%: Official
- Despite Rhetoric, Obama Has Limited Options To Boost Jobs
- Disney CFO and Parks Chief to Swap Roles
- Housing Recovery 'Still In Uncharted Territory': HUD Secretary
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
- Gold Is a Bad Inflation Hedge—Like Oil: Stock Picker
- Intel's Andy Bryant Offers An Explanation
- US 'Actively Working' on Weaker Dollar: Fund Manager
- Options Boil on Biotech Buyout Rumors
- Warren Buffett's $100,000 Offer and $500,000 Advice for Columbia Business School Students
- Activision Blizzard's "Modern Warfare 2" Sales Break Records
- 5-Star Manager's 5 Stocks for Changing Markets
- What's The Forecast from Retailers? Proceed With Caution
- Job Market Politics to Keep Interest Rates Low
- AIG, Symbol of Crisis, Watches Its Stock Zoom Back
- Disney Profit, Sales Top Street Forecasts; Shares Jump
- Bill Gates Praises Apple's Jobs for 'Saving the Company'
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- Cramer: The Real Reason Stocks Fell Thursday
- Is Euphoric Market Ignoring Warning Signs?
- Video Game Sales Plunge, but Have They Hit Bottom?
- Despite Rhetoric, Obama Has Few Options to Boost Jobs
RSS FEED
Realty Check
Text Size 
 |
CNBC.com |
Many homeowners will begin receiving restitution claims next week from their attorneys general, all part of the $325 million settlement deal with Ameriquest Mortgage Corp. Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley says Ameriquest and its related companies (Town and Country Credit Corp. and AMC Mortgage Services, Inc.) will pay approximately 20,000 Massachusetts consumers $13,752,700. California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr, says Ameriquest will pay 78,000 Californians, who were “targets of improper sales practice,” $51 million.
The settlement, which was reached last year, resolves allegations by the attorneys general and banking and finance regulators of the District of Columbia and every state except Virginia (Ameriquest didn’t do business there). The allegations were that the lender and its affiliates “misrepresented and did not adequately disclose the terms of home loans, such as whether a loan carried a fixed or an adjustable rate; charged excessive loan origination fees and prepayment penalties; refinanced borrowers into improper or inappropriate loans; and improperly inflated appraisals used to qualify borrowers for loans.”
That bit in quotes basically sums up the housing fiasco that will define residential real estate for the first decade of this century: Aggressive lenders coupled with uninformed borrowers who were so jacked with the idea of making a quick buck on a condo or getting themselves into a home they probably knew deep down they couldn’t afford made for a toxic mix.
I have to admit, I have a problem with one part of this settlement, specifically that part: “did not adequately disclose the terms of home loans, such as whether a loan carried a fixed or an adjustable rate.” It’s the word “disclose” specifically. If Ameriquest outright lied in the paperwork, saying in print that it was a fixed-rate loan when it really wasn’t, then fine, the borrowers were duly duped and should be paid. But if Ameriquest agents simply didn’t mention what type of loan it was, and the borrowers didn’t pay enough attention to ask, to be as aggressive in understand their loans as the lenders were in pushing them, then I’m not sure whom is more to blame.
I’ve been saying it over and over again. I know that aggressive and often predatory lending was the hallmark of the latest housing boom, but borrowers who went in with their eyes open to that great big house and closed to the real terms of their loans, are just as much to blame as the lenders.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes