The City of Minneapolis is making it easier to buy a home here through its Minneapolis Advantage program – $10,000 easier, to be exact. Altogether, $2 million is being made available for home-buying assistance in this twin city. Two-hundred $10,000 loans will be divvied out, which are forgivable after five years. The main caveat is that homes must be purchased in specific neighborhoods hit hardest by foreclosures.

Successfully piloted in 2008, the Minneapolis Advantage program has already assisted [...]

Read more »

Plaza Square apartments, a major distressed complex located in downtown St. Louis, is finally scheduled for a foreclosure sale. Urban Developers LLC (UDL), owner of five of the six Plaza Square buildings, initially filed for bankruptcy in 2007.

Judge Charles Rendlen, however, decided to lift the stay against foreclosure, allowing the complex to be sold on the courthouse steps. The sale date and details: July 28 at noon in front of the Civil Courts building. That is [...]

Read more »

It’s true and it’s tragic. The mortgage crisis continues as St. Louis-ites lag behind on their mortgage payments. According to data from First American CoreLogic, a leader in loan evaluations, one in every 23 borrowers in the St. Louis area was, at least, 90 days behind. That is based on figures noted in May of this year.

Around 4.3 percent of the area is currently struggling. That’s quite a jump from the 3 percent noted the same [...]

Read more »

More borrowers who were hit hard by falling home prices will now be able to take part in the fed’s mortgage refinancing program. The Obama administration is broadening the Making Home Affordable program to include loans up to 125 percent of the home’s value.

Prior to the new plan announced in February, the limit for a borrower’s loan eligibility to refinance was 105 percent of the home’s value. The change comes on the heels of home prices falling so [...]

Read more »

U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Linda Riegle ruled earlier this year that, unless it could produce the actual loan note, the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) couldn’t represent loan companies attempting to foreclosure on homeowners in default who were already in bankruptcy.

Lenders notoriously sell their loans to other lenders. Often the note will go through several owners. With this process, producing loan documents becomes a much more challenging task.

Launched in 1993, MERS is a joint venture of several different [...]

Read more »

For the first year since 1981, permits for demolition are surpassing those for new home construction. In addition, southeast Michigan home building permits fell for the fourth consecutive year in 2008. According to representatives from the Southeast Michigan Council of Government (SEMCOG), that’s the sharpest downturn in over 50 years.

Detroit is a contributor to a good portion of those numbers. Some of the city’s areas are blighted. Either property has not been kept up or has [...]

Read more »

The basic Wikipedia definition of a Short Sale is as follows:

A short sale is a sale of real estate in which the proceeds from the sale fall short of the balance owed on a loan secured by the property sold.

In a short sale, the bank or mortgage lender agrees to discount a loan balance due to an economic or financial hardship on the part of the mortgagor. This negotiation is all done through communication with a bank’s loss mitigation or [...]

Read more »

Whoa! Who would have guessed it would come to this. Condo owners are neglecting their maintenance fees. Along with dissension between neighbors, it is creating more serious problems. The numbers who do not pay are definitely on the rise, and it is making a big impact on homeowners associations (HOAs).

Southern Floridian condo associations are attempting clever and creative methods to encourage condo owners to pay for required fees. A few of their methods include towing [...]

Read more »

Nevada has been ranked #1 in the nation for foreclosures for the past two years. Now, Las Vegas is ranked the #1 city with the highest foreclosures in the nation.. Approximately 10% of homes in Las Vegas are either in foreclosure or close to being foreclosed on. That’s a lot of troubled real estate. In addition, Las Vegas left Detroit in the dust in regards to having the most vacancies..

To the city’s credit, it does have [...]

Read more »

Macomb County in Michigan is among the top 3% of all US counties in the country in terms of the number of distressed homeowners.  Towns in Macomb County such as Warren, MI have been hit hard by the real estate downturn within a state that has seen 36,399 new foreclosure filings this year and an average sale price of $141,016 which is down 38.4% over the past 12 months.  No one wants to receive a notice of default that their [...]

Read more »