House OK's mortgage plan for Struggling Homeowners

House OK's mortgage plan for struggling homeowners
from the Arizona Republic, reports that the House on Tuesday approved a plan to expand federal backing of mortgages in hopes of helping struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure. The bill, which passed the House 348-72, would allow the FHA, which insures mortgages for low- and- middle income borrowers, to back refinanced loans for tens of thousands of borrowers who are delinquent on payments because their mortgages are resetting to sharply higher rates from low, initial "teaser" rates. House Rep. Betty Sutton from Ohio said the legislation, which backers say could help an estimated 250,000 families, "a bold step forward on what is going to be a long road to fix this broken system." The timing is good as earlier this week, research firm RealtyTrac reported the number of foreclosure filings in the U.S. more than doubled last month when compared with August 2006. and jumped 36 percent from July.

Double-digit home price drops coming
from CNNMoney.com, reports that three quarters of housing markets - many in crashing Sun Belt areas - face price declines over next few years. The survey attempted to identify the high and low points of housing prices in each of the markets, some of which started declining from their peak in the third quarter of 2005. All are median prices for single-family houses.

Nationally, Moody's is projecting an average price decline of 7.7 percent. That's a jump from the 6.6 percent total price drop that the company was forecasting in June and more than twice that of last October's forecast of a 3.6 percent price decrease. See entire list HERE

More Housing links: Housing Bubble and Real Estate Market Tracker from SA for 9/19