Mortgage

DALLAS -- Bill Harrison of Fort Worth learned the hard way the hazards of tangling with his mortgage company.Convinced the company was charging him too much in escrow payments, Mr. Harrison withheld from his monthly mortgage payment the amount he believed he was being overcharged.That led to a long-running dispute, which was finally resolved in Mr. Harrison's favor. A happy ending? Not quite."After all that, I got a letter from a credit-rating firm saying they were putting on my credit report that my mortgage payments had been late," Mr. Harrison recalled ruefully.

The mortgage banking industry is hopping mad about new government regulations they say will cut into their business and prove costly to homebuyers."They're horrible," Herbert Tasker, president of the Mortgage Bankers Association, said yesterday of the rules adopted by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and due to become effective next month.The rules, which were applauded yesterday by the National Association of Realtors, permit the payment of fees to real estate brokers who use computerized loan origination (CLO)

Maryland National Mortgage Corp. will consolidate two major offices into a single downtown location, the company said yesterday, quelling widespread fears in the real estate community that the company would leave the city for Baltimore County."

Claude J. Mascari, a retired mortgage broker and longtime Lutherville resident, died Sunday of a massive hemorrhage and stroke at St. Joseph Medical Center. He was 66. Mr. Mascari was born in Baltimore and raised in Canton and Highlandtown. In his youth, he worked for his father, who owned and operated a wholesale fruit and vegetable business in what is today the Inner Harbor area. He was a 1959 graduate of Mount St. Joseph High School in Irvington and earned a bachelor's degree in business from the University of Baltimore in 1965.

The housing industry, rocked in the last several months by a plunge in sales, is finding business by turning to those previously shunned -- consumers with bad credit.Just a year ago, bankruptcies, car repossessions and late or missed payments on other forms of credit were enough to immediately disqualify borrowers from getting a mortgage.But the industry's slowdown over the past year, caused by steady increases in mortgage rates, has prompted mainstream real estate agents and lenders to give a second look at those who before stood almost no chance of owning a home.

The nation's strong economy has continued to push down the mortgage delinquency and foreclosure rate, according to the latest survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association of America. "This is the lowest combined delinquency and foreclosure rate since 1973," said Paul Reid, MBA executive vice president. "The longest economic expansion in U.S. history and historically low interest rates have been the primary drivers pushing the delinquency and foreclosure rates down to these levels." Mortgage delinquencies nationwide posted the largest decline in more than four years, falling to 3.93 percent in the fourth quarter of last year.

More than 50 percent of Americans expect that most home mortgages will originate over the Internet in the next five years, according to this year's Fannie Mae National Housing Survey. While noting concerns over Internet security from respondents, the survey found that people are gaining confidence in use of the Internet to purchase a home. The survey revealed that prospective homebuyers use the Internet as an "easier way to compare and apply for various mortgages, and as a way to reduce racial discrimination in borrowing."

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Most homebuilders have a simple economic theory: Ignore the bad news, and maybe it'll go away.But the nation's 20th-largest builder, M/I Schottenstein Homes, has decided to attack the recession head-on by offering a "Worry-Free Mortgage" -- an insured program that will pay a homeowner's mortgage for six months if unemployment strikes.M/I, which had 1,976 home starts in 1990, builds in Ohio, North Carolina, Florida and Washington, D.C."Last September, when everybody was talking about recession, I started thinking: What is the most important thing on a customer's mind right now?

WASHINGTON - - When you do a short sale of a house, or modify the mortgage, is there much of an effect on your credit score? What if you walk away from the mortgage altogether? A scoring company created by the three national credit bureaus - Equifax, Experian and TransUnion - has some eye-opening numbers. VantageScore Solutions, whose risk-prediction scores are now being used by some of the largest mortgage companies and banks, has found that the way consumers handle their mortgage problems can profoundly affect credit scores.

Here are some of the mortgage products available from Fannie Mae aimed at increasing the amount of business it does in central cities such as Baltimore. In most cases, the mortgages are available to families at 100 percent or less of the area's median income, but there are exceptions. For information about Fannie Mae's HouseBaltimore program, call Fannie Mae's public information office at 1-800-7FANNIE (1-800-732-6643) Monday-Friday, 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.* Community Home Buyer's Program -- This is a 5 percent down payment, 15- to 30-year fixed-rate mortgage with a gross monthly housing expense-to-income ratio limit of 33 percent, which can be exceeded if a borrower demonstrates strong compensating factors, such as a history of being able to pay higher housing expenses.