Loan sharks face fresh government crackdown

The government is stepping up its crackdown on illegal money lenders who target vulnerable people. The Treasury has earmarked £5.5m, up 16% on last year, to pay for investigations and prosecutions of “nasty lenders” and “lowlife crooks” as well as support for their victims. More than £100,000
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Every eight years, each city and county is told how many low-income and market-rate homes it must add to its general plan to meet the needs of the region. The fact that many cities are meeting those goals for market-rate housing — despite a severe housing shortage — shows that that the policy isn't
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The Trump tax cuts made only one significant change regarding mortgage interest, by lowering the maximum amount of deductible mortgage debt on a new loan from $1 million to $750,000. That affects very few home owners. But the new limit on the SALT deduction, along with the bigger standard
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Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (ARE):. Share of Alexandria Real Estate Equities, Inc. (ARE) have caught the attention of the Wall Street community. The stock price is settled at $121.37 after trading hours. Taking a look at the daily price change trend and size of price movement it is recorded that
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KOKOMO, Ind. (AP) — A private developer is planning to build a student-only housing complex near Indiana University's Kokomo campus. The developer says the complex will have space for 125 students and is expected to open during the summer of 2019. Kokomo Mayor Greg Goodnight says the new
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France and the U.S. may have worked together to strike the Syrian regime's chemical weapons infrastructure on April 13. but the two countries have had different objectives. U.S. President Donald Trump has said he wants to reduce the U.S. presence there, while French President Emmanuel Macron has
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Shire Plc is considering a new offer from Takeda Pharmaceutical Co. after the Japanese drugmaker revised its roughly $60 billion bid for the biotechnology company once again. Shire's board “is considering its position” on a new bid, the company said in a statement Tuesday after Bloomberg News
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Although the national mortgage application denial rate is 8 percent, seven of the top 10 states for mortgage denials were in the South. Birmingham, Ala., led the country with a 13 percent denial rate, which was primarily blamed on credit history. New Orleans placed second with a 12 percent denial rate
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Other data on Tuesday also showed house prices increasing solidly in February. Strong consumer confidence and rising house prices should underpin consumer spending, which appears to have braked sharply at the start of the year. “Americans appear to think the economy is headed in the right
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The real value of the construction industry rose 8.5 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, the largest increase since the first quarter of 2016, according to the latest report from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. This surge is an encouraging sign for the U.S. housing market for the rest of this year.
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Eurobonds however remain more attractive than domestic currency bonds, with Nigeria recently using them to refinance its domestic debt. Eurobonds offer a diversified investor base, and high demand from yield chasing international investors. This proves that despite increasing and unpredictable costs,
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Rising prices, low inventory and a dearth of new construction are fueling a seller's market in the Baltimore-Washington area that is only going to get worse if Amazon.com Inc. picks Maryland or D.C. for its HQ2, the mid-Atlantic head of Coldwell Banker said Tuesday. Duff Rubin said some sellers are
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As I detailed in the second column in this HousingWire series, only nine of the 342 MSAs included in the VeroFORECAST that covers through March 1, 2019 are predicted to depreciate. Eighteen of the 25 markets forecast to perform the worst are east of the Mississippi River and 92% of the 25 markets
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Sales of new single-family houses in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 694,000, which is four percent above the revised February rate of 667,000 and is 8.8 percent above the March 2017 estimate of 638,000, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of
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(Bloomberg) — Saudi Aramco, the world's biggest oil exporter, plans to trade as much as 6 million barrels a day, a jump in volume that would put it in the top tier of companies that buy and sell crude and refined products. The trading arm of the state-run giant known officially as Saudi Arabian Oil Co.
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Supervision. In 2017, the CFPB issued several final rules to clarify, revise, and update the regulatory framework applicable to the home mortgage origination and servicing market: Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). In August 2017, the CFPB published a final rule that clarifies certain HMDA data
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The program will serve the educational needs of real estate professionals and businesses serving the Pasco County. The fact that Pasco is one of the fastest growing areas in the state of Florida, it is imperative for those who serve Pasco County to be well informed on market trends and upcoming
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Flagstar Bancorp returned to profitability in the first quarter after tax reform caused a fourth quarter loss, but its mortgage revenues dropped 15% due to margin compression and lower volume. The company generated net income of $35 million for the first quarter, compared with a fourth quarter loss of
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“Combined with yesterday's decent existing home sales data, today's report gives the housing market a much-welcome double whammy of good news, especially on the inventory front,” Terrazas said. “Inventory of existing homes has risen in each of the past three months, the first such streak since early
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The U.S. Supreme Court upheld an administrative review system that has helped Google Inc., Apple Inc. and other companies invalidate hundreds of issued patents. The justices, voting 7-2, said Tuesday a U.S. Patent and Trademark Office review board that critics call a patent “death squad” wasn't
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