Single-family housing completions also rose 20.1% year-over-year, with the nation recording 651,000 home completions in April, compared to 542,000 a year earlier. Home completions also are up 10% from March’s revised estimate of 592,000 completions.

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Mortgage applications increased 9.2% for the week ending May 11 as more investors fearing Europe’s debt crisis fled to U.S. Treasury securities, an industry trade group said Wednesday.

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There is something deceiving about the current low mortgage rates.  To a certain extent they obscure the underlying economic fundamentals that are hitting the state.  Certainly no one is going to look at an underemployment rate above 20 percent and a budget deficit of $16 billion and claim that the economy is booming.  Old habits [...]

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Hundreds of millions of dollars meant to provide a little relief to the nation’s struggling homeowners is being diverted to plug state budget gaps.

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The lawyers for Goldman and Bank of America/Merrill Lynch have been involved in a legal battle for some time — primarily with the retail giant Overstock.com, but also with Rolling Stone, the Economist, Bloomberg, and the New York Times. The banks have been fighting us to keep sealed certain documents that surfaced in the discovery process of an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit filed by Overstock against the banks. Last week, in response to an Overstock.com motion to unseal certain documents, the banks’ lawyers, apparently accidentally, filed an unredacted version of Overstock’s motion as an exhibit in their declaration of opposition to that motion. In doing so, they inadvertently entered into the public record a sort of greatest-hits selection of the very material they’ve been fighting for years to keep sealed.

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The conservator of Fannie Mae (FNMA) and Freddie Mac may let servicers forgive debt on a limited number of mortgages owned or guaranteed by the taxpayer-owned companies, according to a person with direct knowledge of the discussions.The model could be a new California effort that will pay for writedowns using federal dollars set aside for regions that have seen the worst housing-market declines, the person said. Because the government will bear the full costs of the California program, mortgages backed by the two government- sponsored enterprises will be eligible for the first time.

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Data is not available, but interviews with more than 30 lenders, builders, Realtors and consumers suggest that a growing number of Americans are getting back into the housing market, even though they went through a foreclosure, bankruptcy or short sale in recent years.

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Starts rose 2.6 percent to a 717,000 annual rate from March’s revised 699,000 pace that was stronger than previously reported, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. The median estimate of 80 economists surveyed by Bloomberg News called for a rise to 685,000. Building permits, a proxy for future construction, fell from a more than three-year hig

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Impac Mortgage Holdings reported a net loss in the first quarter of $4.8 million, or a loss of 61 cents a share, shrinking its year-ago loss of $987,000, or a loss of 12 cents a share.

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Bank of America launched a new short sale program that could pay distressed homeowners between $2,500 and $30,000 in relocation assistance.

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