Yahia Karin ventured out in Gaza on Sunday to see his home after a series of furious clashes between Israeli troops and Hamas fighters in the area. But there was nothing there. "I came to see my home, but as you can see, there is no home here anymore," the 54-year-old said as he surveyed the charred ruins on the spot where his residence once stood in Zeitun, an outlying southern neighbourhood of Gaza City. "Everything has been completely destroyed,".

via news.iafrica.com

New residential mortgage insurance applications continued a year-long decline in November, while the continued market upheaval drove up both mortgage defaults and cures, according to a survey of the biggest private mortgage insurers. Insurers received 39,098 new applications for mortgage insurance in November, the lowest monthly number in at least a year, and less than one-fourth the 173, 259 applications received in November of 2007. The drop in applications goes along with a drop in new insurance written.

via money.cnn.com

New permanent limits on the maximum mortgage amount insured by the Federal Housing Administration will take effect Thursday. In the Tri-Cities and many other markets in Washington, the limit on a one-family home will increase 35.4 percent from $200,160 to $271,050, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Higher-cost markets such as the Seattle area will have higher limits.

via tri-cityherald.com

Hundreds of private lenders, using the latest technology and paying high salaries, failed to adequately manage mortgage credit risk during the housing boom. Now, the Federal Housing Administration, using 24-year-old computer programs and civil servants who still handle some loan documents by hand, is trying to do better. At an FHA processing center in Philadelphia's Center City -- one of four such centers across the country -- the number of loans approved for insurance has soared to an average of about 40,000 a month from 12,250 a year ago.

via online.wsj.com

A new wave of loan defaults, this time tied to commercial mortgages, is starting to hit insurance companies and may be contributing to the stock market's woes. Industry players say the insurers' predicament is being worsened by a rule requiring that mortgage assets be valued at current market prices - a mandate that federal regulators are re-examining. The industry's growing threats are forcing some radical changes. Some insurers, including Hartford Financial Services Group Inc., Genworth Financial Inc.

via dailynews.com

The failure of the Nigerian Communications Satellite, known as NigComSat-1, in the orbit on November 10, may push up insurance rates in the satellite industry, investigations have shown. Our correspondent reports that similar occurrences in the past had triggered a spike in premium for spacecraft insurance as they highlighted the risky nature of satellites operations. According to Spacereport, an online space industry publication, the space insurance market had turned frosty following the December launch of the RASCOM-QAF1 pan-African communications satellite.

via punchng.com

Following yesterday’s interest rate cut from 4.5% to 3%, there were concerns that lenders would not pass on the rate cut to customers. However, earlier today the chief executives of Britain’s top banks were summoned to Downing Street to meet with Chancellor Alistair Darling, where he demanded that they pass on the rate cut to customers with immediate effect. It is believed that the attendees were Abbey, Barclays, HBOS, HSBC, Lloyds TSB, Nationwide, RBS and Standard Chartered.

via sfgate.com

The poll of 2,000 students by M&S Money found that the average student bedroom contains £718 worth of electrical gadgets and appliances, £498 worth of clothing, £224 worth of sports equipment and £210 worth of textbooks. The huge value of a student’s bedroom is not surprising, with 53% of students owning an MP3.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

Borrowers who take out government-insured mortgages will have to pay higher fees under new rules announced this week. Effective Oct. 1, the Federal Housing Administration will raise its mortgage insurance fee to 1.75 percent for a new mortgages and many refinanced loans. That's up from 1.5 percent. For a borrower with a $200,000 loan, that means a fee of $3,500, up from $3,000 in the past.

via sfgate.com

Young children are the number one cause of accidents in such households, according to research from Tesco. They are responsible for 42% of all accidents, with damages totalling £229m. Teenagers cause 250,000 accidents, resulting in £68m pounds of damage over the past year. Adults in households with children are responsible for 33% of accidents.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

A survey conducted by CACI for the Daily Telegraph indicates that one in eight people who have borrowed money to buy their homes since the beginning of last year could be in negative equity. According to the research, almost 145,000 homeowners now have mortgages that exceed the value of their properties. In addition, CACI is predicting that 360,000 borrowers could be in negative equity by the end of this year, if house prices decline by as much as 20%.

via financemarkets.co.uk

Gas prices were climbing ever higher, and his 200-mile round-trip commute from Palm City to Miami had become too costly and too grating. "Every day, it just wore on me a little further," the 49-year-old motorcycle salesman said. So in October, he and his wife, Noelvis, 46, stopped trying to avoid the inevitable. Unable to find decent-paying jobs closer to home, they decided to move south and put their three-bedroom, three-bath Palm City dream house on the market.

via palmbeachpost.com

More than a year after Parliament's approval of the mortgage law, authorities finally began to take steps concerning the so-called �secondary market,� which is the actual component of the mortgage system. Secondary mortgage market is the place where primary mortgage lenders sell the mortgages they make to obtain more funds to finance more new loans. It provides liquidity for the lenders.

via turkishdailynews.com.tr

Current UK economic problems should prompt homeowners to review their insurance, according to protection specialist LifeSearch. Income protection could help homeowners protect their ability to make repayments on their mortgage and any other loans. However, given the complexity of the product and the market, LifeSearch has compiled 10 tips for those choosing a policy. First of all, the firm warned homeowners not to confuse income protection with mortgage payment protection (also known as Accident Sickness and Unemployment) insurance.

via yourmortgage.co.uk

Homes in the city could be bulldozed and houses built in greenfield areas to ensure Norwich has enough places for people to live in the next two decades. That was the stark warning today from the leader of Norwich City Council, who said the existing brown and green field sites designated for housing within the city council area will yield fewer than 10,000 new homes over the next 20 years. The Government has already said 35,000 new homes must be built in and around Norwich by 2025 and Mr Morphew said action needs to be taken now, both to ensure the target is met and also because if a halt was called on building homes then house prices would be pushed up as demand outstripped supply.

via eveningnews24.co.uk