Regional bank National City Corp. said Wednesday it is slashing its dividend by half and shutting its wholesale mortgage division, eliminating 900 jobs, because of weakened housing and credit markets. ...more

January 3, 2008

U.S. homeowners increasingly failed to keep up with their home loan payments in November, as the number of foreclosure filings surged 68 percent nationwide compared with the same month a year ago, according to a mortgage research company. ...more

December 20, 2007

The reading of U.S. home builders' sentiment in December remained at a record low for the third straight month. ...more

December 18, 2007

The Senate moved Friday against the worsening mortgage crisis, voting to make it easier for thousands of homeowners with ballooning interest rates to refinance into federally insured loans. ...more

December 15, 2007

Bucking conventional wisdom, a trade group for real estate agents on Monday said the battered housing market is on the verge of stabilizing and inched up its outlook for 2007 and 2008 home sales. ...more

December 11, 2007

Fannie Mae warned investors Wednesday that its losses would mount next year from bad home loans, even as the mortgage finance company took steps to stabilize its finances. ...more

December 6, 2007

President Bush is expected to announce today an agreement with major mortgage companies to freeze interest rates for five years for financially troubled homeowners - a plan advocates say will help forestall a major foreclosure crisis but some conservatives say amounts to a bailout of people who made bad financial decisions. ...more

December 6, 2007

The Bush administration agreed to delay enforcing a new rule that will let the government charge higher premiums on mortgages it insures for borrowers with poor credit. ...more

December 5, 2007

Recent efforts to hammer out a proposal to temporarily freeze interest rates on certain troubled subprime mortgages have brought up an interesting quandary. Is it the government's job to intervene in what is in part a crisis wrought by greedy lenders and naive and imprudent borrowers? Agreed, the government should not bail out financial irresponsibility, but sometimes there's no alternative. Those opposed to any government initiative to rescue the market before 2 million loans adjust to a higher interest rate –– and borrowers are stuck with payments they cannot afford –– are forgetting that the ripple effect of not doing anything could seriously hurt the general economy. ...more

December 3, 2007

For the second month in a row, Florida's foreclosure rate ranked third highest in the nation, the latest sign many homeowners are falling behind on mortgage payments and increasingly losing their homes, according to California-based research company RealtyTrac. ...more

November 30, 2007