Under reforms expected to be unveiled this month, councils will be told to: earmark new building sites in every village and hamlet where affordable housing is needed ¤ use sweeping powers to overrule normal planning curbs in protected areas ¤ provide incentives for farmers to sell land to developers ¤ create a generation of new communities on the outskirts of market towns, similar to Poundbury, the Prince of Wales’s “model village”. [click to continue…]
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Cynthia Goldrick’s daughter is in and out of the hospital for brain surgery, her mother has Stage 4 lung cancer and her father has moved into a home for the elderly. So when the Goldrick family’s adjustable rate mortgage reset while husband Patrick was off work for a job-related injury, it eliminated the thin margin between their income and the mortgage payment and put them on the road to foreclosure.
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Britain’s biggest lenders are tightening their criteria on buy-to-let mortgages, depriving would-be investors of the chance to take advantage of plummeting prices and record-low interest rates. Nationwide-owned The Mortgage Works, the market-leading buy-to-lender, said this month it will refuse applications from “property developers” — cutting off thousands of landlords from remortgage deals next year.
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The setbacks for development — perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades — are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years. Looking south from the eighth floor of a half-finished office tower on 14th Street on a recent day, Mr. Blaichman pointed to buildings he had developed in the meatpacking district. Mr. Blaichman, who has built two dozen projects in the past 20 years, is struggling to borrow money: $370 million for the three hotels, which include a venture with Jay-Z, the hip-hop mogul. [click to continue…]
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The rapid drop in home prices this year has helped to bring previously inflated prices closer to normal levels. About 20% of Los Angeles-area residents could afford to buy a median-priced home at the end of September, according to a National Assn. of Home Builders index. A year before, only 2% could make such a purchase, based on area income levels.
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When his Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., told him that to stave off disaster, he would have to sign off on the biggest government bailout in history. Mr. Bush did foresee the danger posed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored mortgage finance giants.
The president spent years pushing a recalcitrant Congress to toughen regulation of the companies, but was unwilling to compromise when his former Treasury secretary wanted to cut a deal. As early as 2006, top advisers to Mr. Bush dismissed warnings from people inside and outside the White House that housing prices were inflated and that a foreclosure crisis was looming.
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According to a report by Douglas Elliman, real estate prices fell 11.1 percent in the third quarter in the Hamptons, an exclusive section on the eastern tip of Long Island, less than 100 miles from New York City. According to Gregory’s real estate agent, he and his wife are selling because they spent little time there after purchasing and upgrading the posh property two years ago. [click to continue…]
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) has forecast that repossessions will reach 45,000 this year and rise by 67 per cent in 2009. The homeless charity Shelter said that with a million more mortgages held now than in the previous recession, the number of repossessions could increase. [click to continue…]
House sellers are out on strike This is meant to be a buyer’s market: house prices are falling and homeowners who are struggling with mortgage repayments are being forced to sell. Try telling that to Larissa and Fergus Caheny, who have been searching for a new house since they sold their home in south London in May last year. “There are distressed sellers putting their homes on the market, but these are not the properties we want to buy. [click to continue…]
One major difference is that Amish people don’t take out a buggy loan. In fact, most Amish don’t have much debt at all.
O’Brien says 95 percent of his customers at the Hometowne Heritage Bank are Amish. [click to continue…]
