Real Estate
Anatomy of a Meldown: The Credit Crisis
A three-part series by The Washington Post dissects the current credit crisis. The series looks at how forces aligned to create “the biggest American housing boom since the 1950s,” the stress on the market when new homes went unsold and foreclosures mounted, and finally how the overall impact of the housing market implosion.
Read MoreHouse of pain
Cary Spivak and Daniel Bice of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel detailed how a motley collection of individuals and firms made money off one suspicious real estate deal in which a learning disabled man ended up buying a run-down inner city home. The newspaper hired a handwriting expert who determined that signatures may have been forged…
Read MoreForced Out
A series by Debbie Cenziper and Sarah Cohen of The Washington Post looks at the condo boom in the District of Columbia. Tenants are being displaced as landlords convert apartments to condos using “vacancy exemptions” — sidestepping tenants’ approval and avoiding conversion fees that would offset renters’ relocation costs. Through the analysis of government documents,…
Read MoreSeniors targeted in subprime refinancing
Susan Kelleher and Justin Mayo of The Seattle Times looked at how older borrowers and homeowners are targeted for predatory loans. Analysis of over 4,000 loans from Ameriquest Mortgage uncovered the trend of elderly homeowners being targeted for subprime refinancing that they would never be able to repay, resulting in the loss of their home…
Read MoreScam hits struggling homeowners
A mortgage scam has deceived homeowners in 27 states, including at least 17 in New Jersey. Jason Method of the (Neptune, N.J.) Asbury Park Press investigated the fraud, in which a company contacted homeowners who had been struggling to make their payments. The company promised them a deal: An investor would temporarily buy they property…
Read MoreMore mayhem in the Meadowlands
In an ongoing investigation, Jeff Pillets of The Record in Bergen County, N.J., uncovered how a taxpayer-supported plan to reclaim the North Jersey Meadowlands instead reopened the infamous garbage dumps to millions of cubic yards of contaminated waste. A review of some 10,000 pages of state documents revealed that the site’s developers won a string…
Read MoreNeglect plagues property holdings of ex-NBA star
An investigation by The Sacramento Bee’s Terri Handy and Phillip Reese shows that former NBA star Kevin Johnson is responsible for a slew of neglected properties in the downtrodden area of Oak Park where his investments have been widely publicized and praised. “Within a two-mile radius, a Bee investigation found, half of the 37 parcels…
Read MoreSubprime crunch felt on Jersey Shore
The Asbury Park(N.J.) Press analyzed federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to report that in Monmouth and Ocean counties subprime lending accounted for one out of five mortgages in 2006, a total of $3.1 billion. Reporter Jason Method found “the income of subprime borrowers was 5 percent lower than those taking out traditional mortgages, yet…
Read MoreFlorida faces downturn in real estate, jobs
Florida Today published a three-part report on how the local economic boom has gone bust. “The shifting real estate market has spooked homebuyers, frustrated sellers, stalled new development and trapped some residents with mortgages they can no longer afford.” Reporters John McCarthy and Scott Blake, and assistant managing editor Matt Reed examine the trends and…
Read MoreBad loans spread problems across U.S.
Rich Brooks and Constance Mitchell Ford of the Wall Street Journal examine the sad state of the country’s mortgage markets, finding evidence to dispel the conventional wisdom that subprime loans mainly were given out to low-income borrowers who can’t afford the payments. Instead, the newspaper reports that “. Although the concentration of high-rate loans is…
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