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JPMorgan Chase & Co reported fourth-quarter earnings jumped, helped by narrowing losses on bad loans.
The bank said earnings climbed to $4.8 billion, or $1.12 a share, from $3.3 billion, or 74 cents a share, a year earlier. Analysts on average expected a profit of $1 a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. Get the full story »
Rates on fixed mortgages dipped for the second straight week as Treasury yields fell. Freddie Mac says the average rate on the 30-year mortgage dropped to 4.71 percent this week from 4.77 percent the previous week. It hit a 40-year low of 4.17 percent in November. Get the full story »
Applications for U.S. home mortgages increased last week as lending rates eased from recent highs, an industry group said on Wednesday. The Mortgage Bankers Association said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage application activity rose 2.2 percent in the week ended Jan. 7 to its highest level in about a month. Get the full story »
Charles Schwab Corp. will pay $18 million to settle regulatory charges that it hid mortgage-related risks in a bond mutual fund from investors. Get the full story »
The era of near 4 percent mortgage rates has ended after a quick rate rise since early November. But some industry experts think that may be a good thing for the flagging housing market.
The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has risen to 4.86 percent from 4.17%, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly mortgage market survey. In the Bankrate.com weekly survey, the rate has risen to 5.02 percent — crossing the 5 percent mark for the second time in three weeks — after being as low as 4.42 percent as recently as early November.
Rates haven’t been this high since May and forecasters now predict them to remain between 5 percent and 6 percent for all of 2011. Get the full story »
Allstate Corp. has sued Bank of America Corp. and the Countrywide Financial mortgage unit it acquired in 2008 regarding $700 million in residential mortgage-backed securities the insurer purchased, claiming Countrywide misrepresented the investments, Bloomberg News reported Tuesday.
“Countrywide was singularly focused on increasing its market share, off-loading the risk onto Allstate and other institutional investors that purchased securities backed by pools of Countrywide’s mortgages,” Allstate said in its civil suit, filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Get the full story »
Rates on fixed mortgages dipped after rising for five weeks in a row.
Still, they remain more than a half-point higher than last month and are at the highest level since late spring. Get the full story »
Fannie Mae said serious delinquencies on single-family mortgages declined further in October from September, while Freddie Mac reported that such delinquencies turned up in November for a second straight month, after seeing declines since February.
While the number of U.S. households behind on their mortgage payments declined during the third quarter, the number of newly initiated foreclosures rose as banks continued to clear a backlog of delinquent loans. Get the full story »
Sales of existing homes in the Chicago area plunged more than 30 percent in November, hurt by difficult comparisons as buyers last year sought to capitalize on federal homebuyer tax cut programs. Get the full story »
Nearly a century after coming into existence, the mortgage deduction may face a day of reckoning. Although out of the spotlight while the lame-duck Congress thrashes to an end, the mortgage deduction issue is likely to resurface next year when the new Congress — including a lot more deficit-hawk Republicans — takes over.
In part, the hoary deduction has a target on its back as a result of policymakers rethinking the whole issue of homeownership. In the wake of the havoc that followed the latest housing bust — a calamity that still shadows the U.S. economy and will for years to come — it’s no longer so clear that near-universal homeownership should be a paramount goal. Get the full story »
Mortgage rates rose in the latest week, extending their bounce off record lows they set in the fall, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey.
Rates have climbed in recent weeks after they fell through October, setting repeated lows. Yields on Treasurys have jumped sharply recently, and mortgage rates generally track the yields, which move inversely to Treasury prices. Get the full story »
Bank of America Corp. is in talks with a group of six investors to settle charges that it mishandled $16.5 billion in mortgages packaged into bonds, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.
The investor group, which includes Freddie Mac, PIMCO, BlackRock Inc. and Allianz SE, told the bank in October that it had 60 days to respond to allegations that it did not properly service 115 bond deals comprising mortgages. The deadline for the bank’s response was Thursday, the Journal said. Get the full story »
The Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee voted Tuesday to recommend Joseph A. Smith Jr. as the next director of the beleaguered housing finance agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The mortgage giants have received $151 billion from the federal government to keep them afloat, and President Barack Obama must tell Congress his plan for reorganizing the agencies next month. Smith would be in charge of carrying that out. Get the full story »
U.S. mortgage rates extended their bounce from recent record lows in the latest week, according to Freddie Mac’s weekly survey of mortgage rates, as Treasury yields continue to climb.
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.61 percent for the week ended Thursday, up from the prior week’s 4.46 percent but down from 4.81 percent a year ago. Get the full story »
Consumers are expected to get better control on their mortgage and credit-card payments next year as the economy slowly improves.
Chicago-based credit reporting firm TransUnion predicts that delinquencies, or late payments, on the two biggest major forms of borrowing will drop sharply again in 2011, after substantial declines seen in the second half of this year. Get the full story »
