Obama's new Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Rule will radically change YOUR neighborhood

AFFH is easily one of President Obama’s most radical initiatives, on a par with Obamacare in its transformative potential. In effect, AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood — imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning to transportation to education. Not only the policy but the political implications are immense — at the presidential, congressional, state, and local levels.

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REAL ESTATE: OBAMA STRIKES AGAIN

Dodd Frank Real Estate Basics, What It Is and How To Protect Yourself

Published July 10, 2014 | By ListedBY

Chris Dodd and Barney Frank have long since retired, but the namesake legislation they crafted four  years ago is about to unleash sweeping changes in the mortgage and real estate markets.
 

According to real estate attorney Shari Olefson, who also wrote the book Financial Fresh Start, the changes took effect January 1st and few people even know about them.
 

“It’s not a bad idea to have less risky loans,” she says in the attached video. “The problem is folks are just not really ready for this. Banks have been preparing for this for a while, but folks on the street are just not aware of it.”

What she’s talking about is the coming dawn of the qualified or ‘’safe harbor’’ mortgage era. 

“Here’s the problem. In order for banks to benefit from a ‘safe harbor’ against lawsuits by borrowers, the loans they issue now under Dodd Frank have to be considered qualified mortgages,” Olefson says.

Specifically, she says that means debt-to-income ratio cannot exceed 43%, points and costs cannot exceed 3% and banks must independently verify that a borrower “has the ability to repay” via eight different criteria.

While the all sounds logical and well intentioned, Olefson foresees some problems.

“Here’s the catch, about 20% of people who have mortgages right now, will not be able to get qualified mortgages.  So what’s going to happen to those people is they’re going to have to go elsewhere for the new mortgage loans, or banks will have to price them more expensively because they don’t have these protections against lawsuits.”

What that means, she says, is that “it’s starting to sound like we may be seeing what used to be sub-prime loans again,” as well as the reality that more people will be pushed into the rental market.

Again, while this may be news to Mom and Pop, institutional money has been pouring into residential, single-family homes for years, and Wall Street is now poised to collect rent-checks until the real estate market rebounds enough for a suitable return on investment. As she frames it, private industry is stepping in exactly as Uncle Sam is easing out of the mortgage business.

Olefson also points out that all of this comes at a time when homeownership levels are already falling, from a peak of 69% to just 63% today. It’s a trend she fears could carry huge societal ramifications given the fact that 75% of American wealth has historically come from home ownership, or as she calls it, “essentially a forced savings account.”

Mess with that safety net, and it’s easy to see why she says the ripple effects of unintended consequences could easily outweigh the benefits of a four year old law.

http://blog.listedby.com/knowledge-centre/dodd-frank-real-estate-basics-what-it-is-and-how-to-protect-yourself/

And you thought the government was corrupt

Well, you ain't seen nothin' yet:

The Obama administration continues giving leftist groups huge sums to conduct minority housing counseling, this month allocating $40 million with one of the single biggest chunks of cash going to the open borders giant National Council of La Raza (NCLR).

It’s a scandal-plagued program that has received large amounts of taxpayer dollars in the last few years and there seems to be no end in sight. In fact, to justify giving leftwing groups more money to counsel poor minorities on housing issues the administration has spent $36.2 million on studies, a Judicial Watch investigation found last summer.

Incredibly, the multi-million-dollar research always concludes that housing counseling is a positive and valuable thing for low-income populations and minorities. The idea is to help minorities seeking a good home or struggling to keep one on the verge of foreclosure through community groups that benefit from public funding. Last year alone Uncle Sam gave the nonprofits $42 million to accomplish this mission.

The NCLR, whose federal funding skyrocketed since one of its top officials got a job in the Obama White House, is always among the largest recipients.

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New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

The study painstakingly sorted through failed home loans that caused the housing market collapse and identified an overwhelming connection between them and CRA mortgages.

Again, let's review:

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New study confirms economy was destroyed by Democrat policies

A new study from the widely respected National Bureau of Economic Research released this week has confirmed beyond question that the left's race-baiting attacks on the housing market (the Community Reinvestment Act--enacted under Carter, made shockingly more aggressive under Clinton) is directly responsible for imploding the housing market and destroying the economy.

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Previously unpublished documents reveal Obama's private sector disaster

With landmark lawsuit, Barack Obama pushed banks to give subprime loans to Chicago’s African-Americans

OMG: DOUBLE COUNTING!!!

Data on sales of previously owned U.S. homes from 2007 through October this year will be revised down next week because of double counting, indicating a much weaker housing market than previously thought.

Realtors: We Overcounted Home Sales for Five Years

Gosh, wonder how that happened? Maybe we should ask Jon Corzine.

Did you know that Lee Harvey Oswald had attempted to assassinate a right-wing general named Edwin Walker before he shot Kennedy?

In 1963, a popular Democratic president was assassinated by a Marxist named Oswald, who had actually defected to the Soviet Union and returned to the U.S. with a Soviet wife, was an active member of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, and had attempted to assassinate a right-wing general named Edwin Walker earlier in the year.

Yet those who write history found these facts inconvenient. They created a different history in which the "atmosphere of hate" in the southern city of Dallas, Texas, led to the terrible political violence. In other words, it was political conservatism that led to John F. Kennedy's assassination.

How the Democrats Nearly Destroyed the Economy

Gov't policies promoted systematic loosening of underwriting standards to promote affordable housing, which then contributed to housing bubble, mortgage meltdown and financial crisis

Conclusion: The major cause of the financial crisis in the United States was the collapse of housing and mortgage markets resulting from an accumulation of an unprecedented number of weak and risky Non-Traditional Mortgages (NTMs). These NTMs began to default en masse beginning in 2006, triggering the collapse of the worldwide market for mortgage-backed securities and in turn triggering the instability and insolvency of financial institutions that we call the financial crisis. Government policies forced a systematic industry-wide loosening of underwriting standards in an effort to promote affordable housing, compounded by moral hazard spread by Fannie and Freddie."

Here are six facts about the government's role in the crisis...

End Gov't. Subsidy of 30-Year Fixed-Rate Mortgages

Bottom Line: It's not that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is inherently bad, but it's the government support and subsidy of those mortgages that has had distorted mortgage and housing markets, and contributed to two serious banking and financial crises. We shouldn't end the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, but we should end the government support and subsidy of those mortgages.

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FYI: This is one of Mark Levin's favorite bloggers...

Do you want the bad news first or the bad news?

From InstaPundit - Gas Is Going To $5 A Gallon, Consumer Spending Is Dead, And House Prices Will Fall Another 20%...

American Economic Association: chances are slim for U.S. growth

U.S. growth prospects deemed bleak in new decade
Pedro Nicolaci da Costa
ATLANTA

Sun Jan 3, 2010 6:55pm ESTATLANTA (Reuters) - A dismal job market, a crippled real estate sector and hobbled banks will keep a lid on U.S. economic growth over the coming decade, some of the nation's leading economists said on Sunday.

U.S.

Speaking at American Economic Association's mammoth yearly gathering, experts from a range of political leanings were in surprising agreement when it came to the chances for a robust and sustained expansion:

They are slim.

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Barney Frank's decision to 'roll the dice' on subsidized housing is becoming an epic disaster for taxpayers

There is more to this ugly situation. New research by Edward Pinto, a former chief credit officer for Fannie Mae and a housing expert, has found that from the time Fannie and Freddie began buying risky loans as early as 1993, they routinely misrepresented the mortgages they were acquiring, reporting them as prime when they had characteristics that made them clearly subprime or Alt-A.

The Price for Fannie and Freddie Keeps Going Up

Almost two-thirds of all bad mortgages in our financial system were bought by government agencies or required by government regulations!

Barney Frank, Predatory Lender

Recession Worse Than Prior Estimates, Revisions Show

By Bob Willis

July 31 (Bloomberg) -- The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed.