Chart of the Day – For some perspective into the all-important US real estate market, today’s chart illustrates the US median price of a single-family home over the past 40 years. ————
Report shows strategic defaults increasing – Rolfe Winkler – How widespread are strategic defaults? Laurie Goodman and her team at Amherst Mortgage Insight yesterday released a report that shows they are indeed on the rise and for reasons we might suspect: negative equity and a more borrower-friendly environment. – Reuters Blogs
and
Modding mods – Rolfe Winkler – Friday’s announcement that the administration is overhauling its mortgage modification program to encourage principal forgiveness … The plan is a decent one, and it appropriately would have lenders absorb the lion’s share of losses. Still, its an all-carrots approach that may be tough to get off the ground. And taxpayers would get even more deeply involved in housing finance. If it doesn’t work, regulators have a stick to force lenders to take losses, which I describe at the end. – Reuters Blogs
————
The 2nd Bubble – by Bill Sardi – Once again, government is rewarding the irresponsible (half of the home mortgages written during the real estate bubble of 2003–08 took out 2nd mortgages to ... – Lew Rockwell.com
————
+ 
Morning HAMP – by CalculatedRisk – Two articles and a favorable reaction from Laurie Goodman at Amherst …
and
Help for HAMP: Feds Finally Try to Patch Up Troubled Foreclosure Program – By Alain Sherter – Bnet.com
————
Reverse mortgages: MetLife Eliminates Origination and Servicing Fee, Trend Begins - MetLife Bank announced a new pricing option available … This new pricing option, which applies to the HECM fixed product will eliminate the origination fee and servicing fee, meaning that borrowers could receive additional loan proceeds ranging from $3,500 to $10,000, or more said MetLife. … – Reverse Mortgage Daily
————
Mortgage-banking veteran Bott leads FHA foreclosure-prevention effort – By Dina ElBoghdady – … FHA Commissioner David H. Stevens, who had worked closely with Bott when they were at Wells Fargo this decade, plucked Bott out of the private sector to join the agency. … At the time, Bott was a vice president of institutional risk at Wells Fargo. During her years there, she put in place systems that monitor the credit quality of borrowers and ensure that they receive proper disclosures when taking out loans. … – Washington Post
————
Lower Home Prices Can Fix What Government Can’t: Caroline Baum – … Between them, the federal government and central bank can lower mortgage rates, modify mortgages, use their power to get private lenders to modify mortgages, and create incentives to move inventory, such as the first-time homebuyer’s tax credit. What they can’t do is manufacture enough artificial demand for an asset that was artificially inflated to begin with … – Bloomberg