KeNo's Housing and Economic Portal: Thursday August 26 Housing and Economic stories

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Florida's largest REMAX real estate company franchise ceasing operations - (www.sun-sentinel.com) RE/MAX Partners, headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, is ceasing operations and closing its offices after nearly two decades in business, owner Ray Glynn said in a letter to agents Tuesday. In the letter, Glynn said five years of declining sales after Hurricane Wilma coupled with a 29 percent drop in business after the expiration of the federal tax credit for first-time and other qualified homebuyers has "made it financially impossible to continue in business." "We have exhausted all our resources and have found no one including RE/MAX who is interested in lending or buying the business," wrote Glynn. RE/MAX Partners is a franchise of Denver, Colo., real estate company RE/MAX LLC. It operates four Broward County offices — two in Fort Lauderdale (East Oakland Park and East Las Olas Boulevards) and one each in Coral Springs and Plantation. According to its website happyavenue.com, it's the largest RE/MAX real estate brokerage in Florida. RE/MAX LLC was founded in 1973 and has a network of more than 6,500 independently owned and operated offices worldwide. Scott Lombard, a recruiter for RE/MAX Partners in Coral Springs said Wednesday agents learned about the closing around 3 p.m. Tuesday. Lombard said management was trying to assist affected agents in relocation to other RE/MAX offices. About 160 agents worked across the four Broward offices, he said.

HUD Offers Interest-Free Loans to Homedebtors; NOTHING for Responsible Renters - (www.businessweek.com) The Obama administration will offer $1 billion in zero-interest loans to help homeowners who’ve lost income avoid foreclosure as part of $3 billion in additional aid targeting economically distressed areas. The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to make loans of as much as $50,000 for borrowers “in hard hit local areas” to make mortgage, tax and insurance payments for as long as two years, according to a statement released today. The Treasury Department will also provide as much as $2 billion in aid under an existing program for 17 states and the District of Columbia, according to the statement. The initiatives will help “a broad group of struggling borrowers across the country and in doing so further contribute to the administration’s efforts to stabilize housing markets and communities,” Bill Apgar, HUD’s senior adviser for mortgage finance, said in the statement. The new loan program, funded under the Wall Street overhaul President Barack Obama signed into law last month, is part of a broader effort to aid unemployed homeowners in the wake of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The $2 billion in Treasury aid announced today doubles the amount already sent to housing agencies in states with unemployment rates at or above the national average during the past 12 months. The U.S. unemployment rate probably will average 9.6 percent in 2010, based on the median estimate of 74 economists in a Bloomberg poll. That would be the highest annual rate since 1983.

Let's do a WikiLeaks on the SEC - (blogs.forbes.com) Remember the financial reform bill that passed recently? The one that’s supposed to keep us all safe from Wall Street? Well get this: buried inside this 2,200-page monster is a provision that encourages the Securities & Exchange Commission to help Wall Street keep its dirty laundry hidden from the public. That’s right. The reform bill for the first time codifies in law the SEC’s right to deny Freedom of Information Act requests that it share with the public information gathered during its “surveillance, risk assessments, or other regulatory and oversight activities.” By way of background, the SEC inspects brokerages, money managers and other investment advisory firms every three to five years. Most of those inspections result in “deficiency letters” outlining things managers have been doing, or not doing, that defy the rules. It would seem logical for the SEC to make these deficiencies public, given that 1. taxpayers pay for these inspections 2. the SEC is supposedly in the business of protecting investors 3. the SEC has proven poor at its job and 4. it’s hard to imagine a more cost-efficient way protect investors than by letting them know where the financial land mines are buried. Such logic, unfortunately, runs counter to the SEC’s big brotherly view that it knows best. Never mind that its bungling of information about the likes of Bernard Madoff enabled him to carry on scams for years that a public with access to more information about his operations might have shunned.

What's the best way to default on your mortgage? - (www.chicagonow.com) I asked Doug Katz, a sales manager at Chicago Bancorp, to write a follow up article on the differing impacts of the various ways of walking away from your home and mortgage. The first article dealt with the impact of mortgage default on your credit score. In our present economy, the terms foreclosure,short sale, and deed-in-lieu of foreclosure have become more commonplace. More and more homeowners strapped with homes that they simply cannot afford are making the tough decision to default on their mortgage obligation. Although such a decision solves an immediate problem, the echo of a mortgage default or foreclosure can go well beyond a simple hit to your credit score. Beyond the obvious drop in FICO score and nasty line item on your credit report, the actual impact of these events in the eyes of future creditors needs to be understood. Will Fannie Mae ever forgive me? For those not familiar with the mortgage industry, Fannie Mae and her little brother Freddie Mac are the big dogs in mortgage lending. They buy the vast number of loans originated in the United States and, because of this, they set many of the rules regarding acceptable credit risk. Criteria such as acceptable income, required cash reserves and credit score are just a few examples. Also included in their loan approval guidelines is the credit history of the borrower, which is comprised of items like on-time payment history, delinquencies, judgments and, you guessed it, derogatory mortgage events such as a foreclosure, short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure.