Thornburg Mortgage Inc.'s five largest creditors have agreed to give the "super jumbo" lender a one-year reprieve from margin calls if it can raise nearly $1 billion in seven business days. Thornburg is offering 12 percent interest to anybody willing to buy notes that will mature on April 1, 2015. The notes would be convertible into common stock at 75 percents per share, the lender said in a regulatory filing.  more...read more Read more…

A statewide multiple listing service in Connecticut this week launched a public property-search site that features about 31,000 property listings. CTreal.com features interactive mapping for home searches including a drawing tool called "Sherpa" that allows users to define a specific home-search area on its Google-based mapping platform.  more... read more Read more…

Seattle-based Zillow.com scored its first partnership with a multiple listing service to feed for-sale property information to the national real estate site. MLS Property Information Network, a privately owned MLS serving the New England area, will begin feeding listings to Zillow on a daily basis, the companies announced today. MLS PIN has about 30,000 participants, and the organization manages a database of approximately 60,000 homes for sale.  more...read more Read more…

Federal regulators say they're giving Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac additional leeway to buy up to $200 billion in mortgages and mortgage-backed securities by relaxing stringent capital requirements put in place in 2004 in the wake of management and accounting scandals.  more...read more Read more…

Although February home sales across Southern California and the San Francisco Bay Area picked up from January, they posted huge declines from a year ago and median prices tumbled. According to real estate information service DataQuick, home sales last month in the six-county Southern California region limped along at the slowest pace ever for a February -- with just 10,777 new and resale houses and condos changing hands. That's a 39 percent decrease from the 17,680 sales reported in February 2007, but an 8 percent jump from 9,983 sales in January 2008.  more...read more Read more…

Despite a considerable drop in long-term mortgage rates, borrowers last week were not breaking down the doors of lenders trying to get a piece of the action, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today. According to MBA, home loan application volume fell 2.9 percent last week on a seasonally adjusted basis from the previous week, led by a 4.6 percent decline in the refinance index and a 1 percent drop in the index that tracks purchase loans.  more...read more Read more…

Long-term mortgage interest rates continued to fall Tuesday, and the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond yield climbed to 3.49 percent. The 30-year fixed-rate average dropped to 5.66 percent, and the 15-year fixed rate fell to 5.04 percent. The 1-year adjustable rate, however, rose to 5.34 percent. The 30-year Treasury bond yield increased to 4.35 percent. Rates and bonds are current as of 7:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.  more...read more Read more…

Reuters - M&T Bank Corp , the first large U.S. bank to report fourth-quarter results, said on Monday that profit tumbled 70 percent, hurt by debt write-downs and turmoil in residential real estate markets. Read more…

BusinessWeek Online - For months, high-end retailers posted healthy sales increases, thumbing their noses at dismal reports of slumping home sales, risky mortgages, and rising energy prices. But now it looks as though even well-heeled consumers are pulling back. On Jan. 10, the upscale department store Nordstrom said that December sales at stores open at least a year fell 4% from last year, compared with an 8.7% increase in November. Saks , New York's Fifth Avenue luxury mainstay, also reported that its same-store sales were up a mere 0.8%, compared with a 25. ... Read more…

Reuters - UBS , struck with billions of dollars of writedowns on subprime exposures, is trying to persuade investment bankers to stay with the company by allowing them to sell some of their share-based bonuses after just one year, the Financial Times reported. Read more…

Reuters - Mayor Douglas Palmer, meeting with visitors at City Hall, points to a large map peppered with dark dots. Each one represents a home or group of homes on the verge of foreclosure, and there are dozens all over the city. Read more…

AP - General Motors Corp.'s top finance executive said Sunday he doesn't see the subprime mortgage mess spreading into auto loans at the company's former credit arm, GMAC financial services. Read more…

AP - Democrat Barack Obama on Sunday unveiled an economic stimulus package costing up to $120 billion that his campaign said would put money in the hands of workers and seniors, stem the foreclosure crisis and cover state budget shortfalls. Read more…

FT.com - Bill Weldon remembers talking to his wife about problems in the US housing market long before the credit squeeze set in. The chief executive of Johnson & Johnson had been perplexed for some time by the number of people who were over-extending themselves by taking on large mortgages - a trend distinctly at odds with his self-confessed prudence. Read more…

Reuters - Amid growing worries about a worsening of the U.S. economy, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama proposed a $75 billion economic stimulus plan on Sunday that includes worker tax credits, a one-time pension supplement and help to homeowners facing foreclosure. Read more…

AP - Bank of America said Friday it will buy Countrywide Financial for $4.1 billion in stock, a deal that rescues the country's biggest mortgage lender and expands the financial services empire of the nation's largest consumer bank. Read more…

FT.com - Rightmove, the UK's largest property sales website, has shrugged off concerns about the housing market with expectations of a record 2007. Read more…

FT.com - Almost one in five new mortgages written in 2007 was either dubbed "subprime" by the bank that loaned the funds or was made to a homebuyer who offered no proof of income, according to an industry trade association. Read more…

AP - The bank branch on the corner might be changing names — again. Get set for the next wave of consolidation that could sweep through the nation's banking industry this year. Chief executives at some of the top regional players might be mulling deals to salvage businesses pummeled by the subprime mortgage market's collapse. Read more…

Reuters - New York prosecutors are investigating whether Wall Street banks withheld information about the risks stemming from subprime loan-linked investments, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Read more…

Likening their actions to those of organized crime syndicates, Cleveland's Mayor is suing 21 major banks and mortgage companies for the roles they played in the sub-prime mortgage crisis that devastated many neighborhoods in the city. Read more…

AP - The city of Cleveland, an epicenter of the nation's home foreclosure crisis, has sued 21 banks and claimed their subprime lending practices created a public nuisance that hurt property values and city tax collections. Read more…

Reuters - Similar deals are expected to follow Bank of America Corp's agreement on Friday to acquire battered mortgage lender Countrywide Financial Corp for a knock-down price of $4 billion in stock. Read more…

AFP - Bank of America said Friday it was buying Countrywide Financial in a four-billion-dollar deal, rescuing the nation's largest mortgage lender from near-bankruptcy in a housing crisis. Read more…

FT.com - Wall Street stocks were set to open lower on Friday amid fears of bigger-than-expected writedowns and loan-losses at financial companies and as Bank of America (NYSE:BAC) agreed to absorb Countrywide Financial (NYSE:CFC), the troubled mortgage lender. Read more…