Washington, D.C., United States (AHN) – Williams-Sonoma Recalls Hot Chocolate Pots Due To Burn and Laceration Hazards WASHINGTON, D.C. – The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and Health Canada, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. It is illegal to resell or attempt to resell a recalled consumer product. Name of Product: Hot chocolate pots Units: About 28,000 units in the United States and 700 in Canada Importer: ICI USA, LLC, of Seattle, Wash. Distributor: Williams-Sonoma Inc., of San Francisco, Calif. Hazard: The [...] Continue Reading…

Lately the rates have been floating in the historic low levels. Then arrived the quantitative easing and that may have persuaded number of prospective mortgage loan applicants to be patient slightly longer for better rates. This week we have understood that if it is not a dangerous game to play at least psychologically testing one. The rates have been moving between the top and the bottom of the spread in one day. All of a sudden there is nobody coming up with a forecast as to where they will stabilize. It is possible that the spread might be broken either way. Before long we may discover which direction it [...] Continue Reading…

Western Springs National Bank and Trust was shut down by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency on Friday. After that, the Nevada Financial Institutions Division took over Nevada Commerce Bank. Also on Friday, the National Credit Union Administration reported that Mission San Francisco Federal Credit Union was [...] Continue Reading…

New loan activity was down 3 percent from last week, according to the Mortgage Market Index for the week ended April 8 from Mortech Inc. and MortgageDaily.com. The index has fallen to 200 from 226 a year ago. Purchase and refinance transactions were lower, though adjustable-rate activity held up.
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The West 70s has Central Park on one side, Riverside Park on the other, and blocks of brownstones and prewar apartments in between.

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A proposed rule seeks to hold all FHA lenders liable when they don’t follow guidelines. The settlement was announced Friday by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. At issue is an alleged failure to “fully verify whether borrowers could sustain their mortgage payments prior to refinancing their loans,” [...] Continue Reading…

Vittorio Hernandez – AHN News
Toronto, Ontario, Canada (AHN) – A survey by the Royal Bank of Canada released Thursday found that 55 percent of young Canadians are postponing home buying decisions for at least one year. The survey covered respondents in the age brackets 18 to 34, which is the period that many employees make major purchase decisions such as residences. The 55 percent rate is 10 percent higher than the national average for all age groups. Among those who previously made the decision to buy a house, about 50 percent said their mortgage payments comprise a sizeable amount of their income. This indicates that the decision [...] Continue Reading…

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. processed 60 matters during February, a decline of one from 61 matters reported a month earlier. A slight decrease was also noted when compared to 64 matters reported in February 2010. The FDIC and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency together issued [...] Continue Reading…

Clearly there are several explanations for why the mortgage increase or decrease. There are volumes of academic books and very few that looks at the intuitive effects. At the end of the day, these rate judgements are made by humans in hundreds of competing mortgage companies all around the country. It is surprising that in spite of all the mess mortgage industry endures at present, the rates have down to record lows recently. Apparently the scare returns as refinance rates keep moving back up pretty fast. Banks know that they still have mountain of toxic debt they would have to write off in a short period of time. [...] Continue Reading…

LendingTree LLC introduced the next generation of its loan marketplace, which promises to increase conversion rates. Recently launched PrecisionAds reportedly provide higher conversion rates because users choose lenders based on a comparative shopping session while never leaving the Web site where they first saw the ad. A new cost-per-lead [...] Continue Reading…