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.

Marylanders received more than $1.3 billion in relief from the National Mortgage Settlement during a 12-month period, Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler announced Tuesday. That assistance went to nearly 17,000 mortgage borrowers between March 1, 2012 and March 31, 2013, Gansler said. The total amount allocated so far is $400 million more than the original estimate of the settlement's total financial relief. Plus, the relief amount announced Tuesday does not include one-time cash payments that will soon be made to borrowers who lost their homes to foreclosure in the period from 2008 through 2011 and whose mortgages were serviced by one of the five settling banks, Gansler said.

Dr. Mary Furth has always "had issues with debt." She has seen the stress that it causes among her patients. Fears of bankruptcy. Fears of losing one's home. The Towson psychiatrist sees patients with big mortgages who then may add a second mortgage or home equity line of credit. Such added burdens are not for her, however. In a few months, she'll be paying off her mortgage. "In a sense, I'm part of a dying breed. I don't see anyone wanting to pay them off," she said. "I'd rather pay [the mortgage]

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.

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)

An Owings Mills man has pleaded guilty to mortgage fraud after prosecutors alleged he took money from at least 48 homeowners to help them get loan modifications, then stole the monthly payments they thought were going to their lenders, the state said Thursday. Rodney Getlan, 45, could be sentenced to as many as 90 years in prison. The state is seeking a 40-year sentence with 10 years suspended, along with restitution of about $400,000 to the victims, the Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation said.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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.

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.