Mortgage

Greg Cantori plans to downsize when he retires. Really, really downsize. His retirement home is 238 square feet — one-tenth the size of the average new American house — and sits in his Anne Arundel County yard. He and wife Renee can hitch it to a truck and take it with them wherever they go. "It's so cheap — that's what's so cool about this," said Cantori, 52, who envisions a surf-and-turf future, alternating between the house and a sailboat. "We bought the house for $19,000.

A mortgage lender based in Utah has agreed to pay a Baltimore woman $13,000 for denying her a loan because she was pregnant and on maternity leave, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Tuesday. Primary Residential Mortgage Inc., based in Salt Lake City, also agreed to adopt a parental leave policy, to ensure its employees are complying with family status provisions of the Fair Housing Act, which prevents lending discrimination based on other applicant traits including sex, race and religion.

Reverse mortgages should never be entered into lightly. These are mortgages for those age 62 and up that allow them to pull the equity out of a house without have to sell it. The loan and interest is repaid once the homeowner moves or dies and the house is sold. The mortgages are so complicated and counterintuitive that homeowners are required to undergo counseling before they can take one out. This often costs money. But the Consumer Credit Counseling Service of Maryland and Delaware, which usually charges $125, is offering counseling for free thanks to funding it has received.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. has lifted a cease and desist order that 1st Mariner Bank has operated under since April 2009, the bank announced Monday. The order required 1st Mariner to strengthen its fair lending practices because the FDIC suspected 1st Mariner of discriminating against Hispanic, black and female mortgage borrowers. The bank charged some of these borrowers more than "similarly-situated" white and male borrowers in 2005, 2006 and 2007, the regulator said.

A reader wants to sell a personal residence to a buyer with poor credit. The seller is willing to finance the purchase, but does not want to transfer legal title until the buyer pays the full purchase price. "How can one do this?"Selling the property by a land installment contract is one way to finance the purchase of a residential property without transferring legal title until the buyer pays the full price. A land installment contract is an agreement between a seller and a buyer in which the purchase price is paid in six or more payments, including the down payment.

Cal Ripken Jr., former Baltimore Oriole and baseball Hall of Famer, has agreed to be the spokesman for mortgage lender NewDay USA LLC, the company announced Tuesday. "In addition to serving as spokesperson for NewDay USA's philanthropic activities, Ripken will headline outreach campaigns in local communities that focus on career development, employee recruitment and NewDay USA University, a state-of-the-art educational initiative designed to prepare current employees and new recruits for successful careers in mortgage banking," the firm said in a statement.

Washington.-- PRESIDENT EISENHOWER warned us in his last State of the Union address: the national debt is a ''mortgage on our children's future.'' To push the budget package, President Bush used the same scary words. But are they true? Who bears the burden of the national debt -- the generation that creates it? Or does the next generation ''inherit'' the burden?The economists get all tied up in questions of who owns the debt, who is owed the debt, who inherits which part and who has to pay interest on the debt.

More homeowners are slipping below the waterline. About 125,000 homes in the Baltimore region were worth less than what their owners owed on the mortgages at the end of last year, up from nearly 120,000 last summer, according to estimates from real estate data firm CoreLogic. All told, close to 20 percent of borrowers are upside down on their mortgages, the company said. The underwater phenomenon grew nationally as well , engulfing an additional 400,000 homes and inching up to nearly 23 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage.

Just over 2,800 Marylanders have received some aid through the national mortgage-servicing settlement this year, with nearly 2,000 others in process, according to the settlement's monitor . The assistance, valued at $224 million, ranges from principal reduction to refinancing underwater borrowers. The average rate reduction for refinancing? More than 2 percent. Five mortgage servicers -- Wells Fargo, Bank of America , Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase and Ally Financial (the former GMAC)

Mortgage applications fell for a third week as home purchases dropped to their lowest level since the end of 2003, a private group survey found. The Mortgage Bankers Association's gauge of applications to buy and refinance homes fell 3 percent in the first week of January to 587.8, the lowest since June, from 605.7. Applications to buy homes declined 5.8 percent to 393.1, the lowest since the week that ended Dec. 26, 2003, from 417.3. Mortgage rates are forecast to rise this year and likely to slow refinancing, according to economists.

Jesse S. Weinberg, who practiced law for seven decades and made a specialty of Baltimore's ground rents, died of respiratory failure March 20 at Sinai Hospital. The Pikesville resident was 94. Born in Baltimore and raised near Druid Hill Park on Lakeview Avenue, he was the son of Harry M. Weinberg, a haberdasher, and Minnie Needle Weinberg, a homemaker. According to an autobiographical sketch, he was born on his parents' 11th anniversary. He attended the old Robert E. Lee School, No. 49, and was a 1935 City College graduate.

The state's House of Delegates recently passed by a 134-to-0 vote a bill that would make it easier for homeowners to refinance mortgages at today's low rates. The bill, modeled after a law Virginia adopted more than a decade ago, would allow homeowners to proceed with refinancing a first mortgage without permission from a second mortgagor. The process of seeking such approval can be costly, confusing and time-consuming, according to the bill's sponsors. “Too many homeowners struggle to make payments on more than one mortgage,” said Del. Sam Arora, a Montgomery County Democrat who co-sponsored the bill, HB 88. “We have a real opportunity to help them by removing an unnecessary barrier to locking in lower interest rates and stay in their homes.” For the law to apply, the principal of the second mortgage would have to be $150,000 or less.

The National Mortgage Settlement's relief is not reaching enough Maryland homeowners and is not as effective as it could be in keeping people in their homes, the Maryland Consumer Rights Coalition said Tuesday. “The number of Maryland families facing new foreclosures continues to dwarf those getting help under the settlement,” said Marceline White, the group's executive director, in a statement. Between March 1, 2012 and the end of last year, about 14,200 homeowners received assistance through the settlement, intended to resolve accusations by 49 states and the federal government that five major mortgage servicers abused borrowers during the foreclosure process.

Maryland homeowners have received over $1.1 billion in assistance from the National Mortgage Settlement, according to a report released Thursday by the settlement's court-appointed monitor. Just over 14,000 homeowners in the state, between March 1, 2012 and the end of the year, received help from the settlement with five major mortgage servicers that were accused of abusive foreclosure practices. The average amount of relief, including mortgage modifications and short sale assistance, was $79,082, the monitor's report said.

Would you support a tax reform measure that could help reduce the federal deficit, remove a needless distortion in the economy and make the system fairer? Me too, which is why I'm taking aim at a sacred cow: the home interest mortgage deduction. That's right, the mortgage interest deduction that every homeowner, including me, loves. If you listen to home builders and real estate agents, they'll tell you that the mortgage interest deduction is what makes homeownership possible for millions of Americans.

A federal grand jury in Baltimore indicted a man Tuesday in connection with a mortgage fraud scheme in which he allegedly bilked banks out of $2.5 million, the U.S. Department of Justice announced. Joshua S. Goldberg was charged with three counts of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The indictment alleges Goldberg and others, through the Baltimore-based Worthington Mortgage Group, falsified applications and appraisals to get mortgages from 2004 to 2008 on at least five properties.

How much house can you afford? That's an important question for anyone planning such a purchase.A rule of thumb says a person can afford a house that costs up to 2 1/2 times his annual gross income (the amount you make before taxes are deducted). Therefore, if you made $40,000 a year, you would be able to afford a house that costs up to $100,000.But that rule doesn't always work. If you have a lot of other bills, you might be better off with a less expensive house.Basically, lenders use two guidelines to determine what size mortgage you can afford:* Your monthly housing costs (mortgage payments, property taxes and insurance)

NEW YORK -- Reacting to reports of mortgage-billing scams, Citicorp Mortgage Inc., the nation's largest servicer of home loans, has issued a blunt warning to its 700,000 borrowers.In a notice accompanying current monthly statements, the Citicorp unit urges homeowners to "please disregard any communications you may receive from other companies requesting that you mail your mortgage payment to them."Press reports across the country have called attention to schemes in which homeowners get bogus letters saying the rights to service their loans have been sold to another company.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings is not happy that the Federal Reserve Board and the Office of the Comptroller of Currency settled with 10 mortgage servicers this week, putting an end to the Independent Foreclosure Review that the government required the firms to organize. “I am deeply disappointed that the OCC and the Federal Reserve finalized this settlement and effectively terminated the Independent Foreclosure Review process before providing Congress answers to serious questions about how this settlement amount was determined, who these funds will go to, and what will happen to other families who were abused by these mortgage servicing companies, but have not yet had their cases reviewed,” said Cummings, ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in a statement following the settlement announcement Monday.