AP - Bank of America Corp. completed its purchase of Countrywide Financial Corp. Tuesday, making the Charlotte-based bank the nation’s leading mortgage originator and servicer.
AP - Gov. Mike Easley called on state lawmakers Tuesday to make up for the federal government’s inaction by approving a measure to help some struggling North Carolina homeowners by giving them more latitude to repay their debt.
AFP - Bank of America said Tuesday it completed its purchase of Countrywide Financial, the largest US mortgage lender that had been at the center of the country’s subprime loan crisis.
Reuters - CIT Group Inc said on Tuesday
it agreed to sell nearly billion of mortgage assets, in a
deal that removes problem loans from the commercial lender’s
balance sheet and lifted its shares 14 percent in premarket
trading.
BusinessWeek Online - After a great run, real estate investments have suffered over the past year, with the average real estate mutual fund down 18%, according to Morningstar. David Lee has managed the .5 billion T. Rowe Price Real Estate Fund (NASDAQ:TRREX - News) since it opened in October 1997, so he has seen tough times before. In the two years after the fund started, shares of real estate investment trusts (REITs) lost almost 20%, even as the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index raced ahead 50%. “Even my family was calling up saying they were going to disown me,” Lee jokes.
AP - CIT Group Inc. said Tuesday it will sell its home lending business to Lone Star Funds for .5 billion in cash, plus .4 billion of assumed debt, in a move to exit the troubled mortgage arena and focus on its commercial finance operations.
Reuters - Florida sued mortgage lender Countrywide
Financial Corp on Monday for predatory lending
practices, alleging the company at the center of the U.S.
mortgage crisis made subprime loans to people who could not
repay them.
AP - Beleaguered consumer bank Wachovia Corp. said Monday it will quit offering a mortgage payment option that allows borrowers to pay less each month than the bank charges in interest.
AP - H&R Block Inc., the nation’s largest tax preparer, said Monday it swung to a fourth-quarter profit, helped by a record-setting tax season and the sale of its troubled mortgage arm.
BusinessWeek Online - Mortgage rates are skyrocketing. Credit is locked up. Economic pressures are rising. Time to bail on that McMansion?