Real Estate News – July 28-29, 2011

MERS, the electronic mortgage registry that faces multiple investigations for its role in thousands of problematic foreclosure cases, changed its rules to lower its profile in court-supervised foreclosures (via Reuters.com): http://reut.rs/oNzr3J

Mortgage rates inched up this week as investors were spooked by political gridlock over how to raise the national debt ceiling and cut the deficit (via foxbusiness.com): http://fxn.ws/odzpcu

A Forsyth County couple is fighting with their home owner’s association to place solar panels on their roof top(via cbsatlanta.com): http://bit.ly/p0V9U5

The bank spent the last two years denying Deborah Johnson’s efforts to save her Sarasota home from foreclosure, and then out of nowhere, last month, sent her an unbelievable offer (via heraldtribune.com): http://bit.ly/n8sems

Debt-Ceiling Crisis Could Wallop the Housing Sector (via theatlantic.com): http://bit.ly/mPJIIY

Economic uncertainty leads to canceled home contracts (via WashingtonPost.com): http://wapo.st/p79LeP

Real estate investment trusts that buy mortgage debt tumbled, adding to their biggest weekly loss in more than a year, on concern the markets that finance them will be roiled if the U.S. government defaults on its debt (via Bloomberg.com): http://bloom.bg/o0hrjH

Not all the foreclosures emptying homes across the Carolinas originate from banks and lenders.  Increasingly, the institution doing the foreclosing is made up of neighbors who run the homeowners association–known as the HOA (via wcnc.com): http://bit.ly/qiaFh1