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Strategies & Market Trends : Anthony@Pacific & TRUTHSEEKER Expose Crims & Scammers!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ravenseye who wrote (4523)	8/28/2007 10:55:35 PM
From: ravenseye	Respond to of 5673

Local mortgage-related layoffs in thousands Kira Bindrim August 28. 2007 3:07PM The fallout from the mortgage crisis has claimed thousands of local jobs. “So far we’ve seen triple the number of cuts in the mortgage area that we saw last year, and it’s only August,” said Chief Executive John Challenger, chief executive of global outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. Job losses in August throughout New York and New Jersey topped 10,000, according to Challenger. On Tuesday, CIT Group became the latest casualty, saying it would shutter its mortgage origination unit and cut 500 jobs. Earlier this month, McLean, Va.-based Capital One Financial Corp. closed its Melville, L.I.-based GreenPoint mortgage unit and laid off 1,900 workers, 120 of them in New York. One of the hardest hit was Melville, L.I.-based American Home Mortgage Investment Corp. The lender filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Aug. 6 and slashed about 90% of its 7,500-person staff, including 1,500 jobs at its Long Island headquarters. Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. also reported 240 subprime-related layoffs. Woodbury, L.I.-based Delta Financial Corp. announced a total of 300 local layoffs and Valhalla, N.Y.-based Columbia Home Loans said it will shut down and lay off its 125 employees by Sept. 30. In New Jersey, Budd Lake, N.J.-based Alterna Mortgage and Warren, N.J.-based Lancaster Mortgage Bankers will close, while Marlton, N.J.-base dPopular Financial Holdings will shutter its subprime unit. In total, those three companies are shedding approximately 700 jobs. The deep job cuts are prompting some workers to try and get in front of any bad news. Steven Speter, managing director of Melville, L.I.-based Lloyd Staffing, says his firm has seen a number of employees looking for alternative positions. “Every day, we get calls from people we’ve never heard of before, and they’re sending their resumes over unsolicited,” he said. newyorkbusiness.com

To: ravenseye who wrote (4523)	8/31/2007 12:31:40 PM
From: ravenseye	Respond to of 5673

Mortgage Firm Sells $500 Million in Stock By BLOOMBERG NEWS Published: August 31, 2007 Thornburg Mortgage, a jumbo-mortgage specialist that was forced to stop making new loans, has sold $500 million of convertible preferred stock to raise cash... nytimes.com ...The transaction follows the Countrywide Financial Corporation’s sale of $2 billion of similar securities to Bank of America last week. Mortgage lenders like Countrywide and Thornburg are turning to costlier financing after being shut out of the short-term debt market. Thornburg had to sell more than a third of its mortgage assets this month to meet obligations it could not refinance. While Countrywide sold its convertible preferred stock to Bank of America at a discount to market value, Thornburg set its conversion price at a 3 percent premium.... Bankrupt American Home to sell $1.62 bln mortgages Wed Aug 29, 2007 6:14PM EDT reuters.com ...The company said Broadhollow Funding LLC and Melville Funding LLC would auction the loans on the morning of September 11 at a Wilmington, Delaware law office. Bidders wishing to participate must notify the U.S. bankruptcy court in Wilmington by the previous day, it said.... ...Broadhollow Funding and Melville Funding are not subject to the Chapter 11 filing, American Home said. Reporting by Jonathan Stempel U.S. Stocks Rise on Bush Mortgage-Aid Plan bloomberg.com ABX subprime mortgage index rises 2 pts Fri Aug 31, 2007 9:22am ET today.reuters.com Investors Default On Outsize Share Of Home Loans By MICHAEL CORKERY and JAMES R. HAGERTY August 31, 2007; Page A1 online.wsj.com ...As a result, some investors have "simply walked away from their mortgages," said Doug Duncan, chief economist of the MBA, echoing recent comments from executives of Countrywide Financial Corp., the nation's largest mortgage lender. Investor defaults are likely to add to the spate of foreclosed homes hitting the market over the next year or two, even as much tighter lending standards cut many potential buyers out of the market. The darkening outlook for the housing sector has prompted economists at Goldman Sachs Group to predict that home prices nationwide will fall an average of about 7% both this year and next. Alarmed by such prospects, a group of top executives from home-building and supply companies are scheduled to meet next Wednesday with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke to argue for Fed actions to support the housing industry... ..."For a while it went their way, they bought two or three homes and continued to roll the dice,'' said Mr. Cecere. "But that goes the other way when the prices go down.''... ...Underscoring the growing pessimism about housing, economists at Goldman Sachs in New York raised their forecast for the drop in U.S. home prices this year to 7% from a previous 5%. The forecast is based on the S&P/Case-Shiller national home-price index, considered the best such gauge by some housing economists. The Goldman economists expect a further 7% decline in house prices next year. In this year's second quarter, the index was down 3.2% from a year earlier. Another house-price index, produced by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, or Ofheo, showed that prices in the second quarter were up 3.2% from a year earlier, the federal regulator announced yesterday. The Ofheo index, based on loans guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, excludes homes financed with mortgages above the current $417,000 limit of the two federally sponsored mortgage giants. As a result, it misses much of the market in California and other high-price areas. The Ofheo index has lagged other gauges in tracing the housing slump of the past two years....