Monday, August 13, 2007

Angela Bassett and Courtney B. Vance's Home is For Sale: Get to Know The Home

Are you ready to buy this home for $6 million? It is worth every penny. Find out why the couple is selling. They have twins through a surrogate. So they have more needs.

The compound they are selling has a 5,000-square-foot main house, built in 1940, with five bedrooms and six bathrooms. It has such features as a hair salon, a gourmet kitchen, an elegant foyer, a master-bedroom suite and parklike grounds. The couple added a detached 2,500-square-foot building that has an office, gym and guest quarters.

Who is Angela Bassett?

Bassett, whose breakthrough role was playing Tina Turner, starred opposite Laurence Fishburne in the movie "Akeelah and the Bee" (2006). She also appeared opposite Whoopi Goldberg in "How Stella Got Her Groove Back" (1998).

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Sunday, August 05, 2007

Homebuilders Offer Mortgage only to Push It Down The Throats of Unsuspecting Buyers who Can Not Afford It

The reckoning time has arrived. Homebuilders have created a monster that wants to swallow their business. It has also created a major headache for many ordinary folks.

Many observers are now saying that it was written the boom would come to an end. It was just a matter of time. In addition to banks and conventional lenders, homebuilders entered the prosperous field of mortgage to make money. The result are half-completed, half-empty houses and subdivisions all over California and the Central Valley.

In addition to spitting out subdivisions, many of which now stand half-empty, builders jumped into the mortgage business to a degree they never had. Wall Street provided the same encouragement it offered other lenders. Even as the housing supply began to exceed demand last year, builders kept sales brisk by pushing adjustable-rate, interest-only, and other risky loans. In some cases they attracted clientele who couldn't afford conventional mortgages. In others, builders allegedly violated federal lending standards to get customers to sign on the dotted line. KB Home (KBH ) paid a record $3.2 million settlement in July, 2005, to resolve allegations by the Housing & Urban Development Dept. that the builder's mortgage unit overstated borrowers' income, among other practices, to obtain loan approvals. KB, which denied wrongdoing, sold its loan business before settling.

Additional Resources:

California, Central Valley's Hot Home Bargains

No Health benefits, No Severance Package, Nothing: American Home Mortgage Investment Corporation Closed Its Door

The rumors turned to founded news. They also turned to fears for many of American Home Mortgage employees who received their last check on this fateful day. No benefits, no severance package. Nothing. Yet, they have mortgage to pay too. There is no way they could see this coming. Workers were cleaning their cubes and offices. Many observers attributed the company’s undoing to the weakening of the real estate market and of the secondary mortgage market, the commerce in financial instruments built from bundled mortgage obligations, which was American Home Mortgage’s specialty.

Now many homeowners who have their mortgage through this company have to find a new one. American Home Mortgage bailed out or checked out.

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