Millions are Facing Squeeze on House Payments

""millions of Americans who stretched themselves financially to buy homes face a painful adjustment -- some could even lose their houses -- as monthly payments on adjustable-rate mortgages are reset higher.

In the hot housing market of recent years, many households took advantage of "affordability" mortgage loans -- heavily promoted by lenders -- that hold down payments for an initial period. Now the initial periods are coming to an end on many of these loans, leaving borrowers to face resets of their interest rates that can cause monthly payments to shoot up between 10% and 50%.

More than $2 trillion of U.S. mortgage debt, or about a quarter of all mortgage loans outstanding, comes up for interest-rate resets in 2006 and 2007, estimates Moody's Economy.com, a research firm in West Chester, Pa.

Most borrowers will be able to cope with the coming wave of resets, in some cases by refinancing with new loans, lenders and mortgage industry analysts say. But some borrowers will have trouble meeting the higher payments and may be forced to sell their homes or could lose their homes to foreclosures. A recent study by First American Real Estate Solutions, a unit of title insurer First American Corp., projects that about one in eight households with adjustable-rate mortgages that originate...........""

from Real Estate Journal

Take the Challenge Essay - $250,000 Wells Fargo

Wells Fargo has announced an Essay contest, where the winner may win a $250,000 mortgage...........

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage announced it will award up to $250,000 (after taxes) toward the purchase of a home to one person through its Take The Challenge™ essay contest.

The nation's No. 1 retail mortgage lender** will award the grand prize to the person who provides the most compelling first-person account of their pursuit of homeownership and who has either purchased a home in 2006, or has plans to buy a first home, second home or investment property in the next three years. The up-to $250,000 after-tax winnings must be applied to a home purchase and entrants must agree to have their essays shared.

Each essay will be reviewed by an independent panel of judges and the winner announced in March 2007.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage launched this contest as part of its founding sponsorship of The Great American Homeowner Challenge™, a nationwide educational effort in conjunction with financial coach and No. 1 best-selling author David Bach to inspire 10 million Americans to buy their first home, a second home or investment property in the next three years. Bach's latest book, The Automatic Millionaire Homeowner(TM), motivates renters and current homeowners to reach their financial goals through homeownership.

Through the essay contest, Wells Fargo intends to unearth motivational stories of personal and financial success through homeownership. "We want the essays written for the Take The Challenge contest to inspire others on the road to a home purchase," said Cara Heiden, division president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. "This is a great way for both renters and current homeowners to publicly express how owning a home can make a difference in their lives."

from RIS Media

for contest information here is the link: Wells Fargo

new credit score simplifies credit process

The Consumer Credit Industry is developing a new type of Credit Score......

The nation's three consumer credit-reporting companies -- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion -- today jointly announced the introduction of a new credit score that aims to simplify and enhance the credit process for consumers and credit grantors.

The new VantageScore leverages shared data from all three companies and analyzes it to arrive at a score. Under the new scoring system, credit score variance between credit-reporting companies will be attributed to data differences within each of the three consumer credit files and not to the structure of the scoring model or data interpretation.

"As markets have matured, so have customers' needs," said TransUnion's Chet Wiermanski, one of the creators of VantageScore and vice president of analytics for the company.

The score analyzes data at the same point in time on the same consumer records from all three national credit-reporting companies. VantageScore was developed using a national sample of anonymous credit information of approximately 15 million consumers and uses a score range of 990-501.

"By developing a patent-pending approach to consistently interpret the credit information stored within each credit repository, also referred to as characteristic leveling, any credit scoring differences between the credit-reporting companies can be attributed to data differences in a consumer's credit file rather than data interpretation -- as is the case in most scoring models today," said Wiermanski.

from: Loans USA