As I was on a working vacation last week, I listened to President Bush’s last State of the Union address. I was prepared for the topic of foreclosures and home ownership because every day in the media those remain very “HOT” topics. He did address that topic because so many people are affected. I did some research and found out that the House approved two measures this past Tuesday which are designed to boost the ailing housing market as part of the economic stimulus package. I tell you what we can all say “OUCH” about the housing market. In some way we are all affected by what is happening in the housing market. I am sure like me, you know someone that has faced foreclosure and having a lot of foreclosures in a neighborhood affects your property as well.

This is one of those times where it does not appear to be a light at the end of the tunnel. I continued to read about what the House approved. Seems they were under pressure from the Bush administration and the lawmakers limited the duration of one of the measurers. Apparently the plan raises the maximum size of mortgages Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy from $417,000 to as high as $729,750 in expensive parts of the country. The propose increase would expire at the end of the year. The House also passed stimulus bill increases the size of Federal Housing Administration backed loans from $352,790 to as high as $729,750 in expensive areas until year-end allowing more borrowers with weak credit to refinance into federally insured loans.

I am all for consumers having the opportunity to get into loans that are fixed per se and federally insured so that they begin to get some relief and know that people are concerned about them. I applaud FHA for wanting to serve more consumers and help them in their time of need. All the different solutions that are out there I believe eliminated a lot of the people that were really in trouble and needed the help. For example, I remember one of the solutions talked about they could not have been late on a payment in order to apply for assistance. Well, given the current state of the housing market if they had not been late on a payment why are they receiving additional options for their mortgage. They are not the ones that need it.

I will be watching to see how the above loans help those that hurting in this market.

Dr. Taffy Wagner

This entry was posted on Friday, February 1st, 2008 at 12:29 pm and is filed under FHA Loans, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.