PrefBlog

This looks better than a government programme as a way to address delinquent underwater mortgages:

Banks, accelerating efforts to move troubled mortgages off their books, are offering as much as $35,000 or more in cash to delinquent homeowners to sell their properties for less than they owe.

Lenders have routinely delayed or blocked such transactions, known as short sales, in which they accept less from a buyer than the seller’s outstanding loan. Now banks have decided the deals are faster and less costly than foreclosures, which have slowed in response to regulatory probes of abusive practices. Banks are nudging potential sellers by pre-approving deals, streamlining the closing process, forgoing their right to pursue unpaid debt and in some cases providing large cash incentives, said Bill Fricke, senior credit officer for Moody’s Investors Service in New York.

What’s more, it seems like there is a direct connection with auto loans:

Three years ago, credit was so tight that the owner of a legal firm with a $400,000 salary and a very good credit score of more than 700 couldn’t get financed to buy the car he wanted from Michael Mosser’s dealership.

“The world is upside-down compared to then,” said Mosser, general manager of Chevrolet and Cadillac stores in Ann Arbor, Michigan. “Today, somebody with a 500 credit score, I can get approved and in a Malibu,” which starts at $22,110.

Lenders resisted extending credit to car buyers when the mortgage market collapsed in 2008, helping push General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC into bankruptcy and sending U.S. sales to the lowest point in almost three decades. Amid a slow housing market, auto demand is rebounding, spurring lenders from Bank of America Corp. to Capital One Financial Corp. to approve buyers faster and at better rates to compete for a piece of an expanding market.

Amazingly, another Greek deadline has been missed:

Greek political parties delayed yet again on Tuesday making the tough choice of accepting painful reforms in return for a new international bailout to avoid a chaotic default, seemingly deaf to EU warnings that the eurozone can live without Athens.

With a series of deadlines come and gone, leaders of the three parties in the coalition of Prime Minister Lucas Papademos postponed what was supposed to be a crunch meeting until Wednesday.

S&P affirmed AltaGas, proud issuer of ALA.PR.A:

• AltaGas Ltd. has announced it is acquiring SEMCO Holding Corp., the sole shareholder of SEMCO Holding Corp. from Continental Energy Systems LLC for about C$1.1 billion.
• We are affirming our ratings, including our ‘BBB’ long-term corporate credit rating, on AltaGas.
• In our view, SEMCO has an excellent business risk profile and a highly leveraged financial risk profile.
• We have revised AltaGas’ business risk profile to strong from satisfactory and financial risk profile to significant from aggressive, assuming the transaction closes as expected. The stable outlook reflects our assessment of the company’s business mix, which is increasingly diverse with a greater contribution from fee-based and regulated utility cash flows.

It was another down day for the Canadian preferred share market, with PerpetualPremiums off 16bp, FixedResets down 14bp and DeemedRetractibles losing 18bp. Volatility was minor. Volume was a little below average.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 7th, 2012 at 9:18 pm and is filed under Market Action. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.