Personal Finance Daily: Fewer will get a mortgage next year

Personal Finance Daily OCTOBER 12, 2011 Fewer will get a mortgage next year By MarketWatch Don't miss these top stories: Fewer will get a mortgage next year Columnist competition entries piling up Wait. Why isn't my BlackBerry working? Stock gurus aren't what they used to be If you think homeowners are unhappy with the outlook for the U.S. real estate market, meet the economists and mortgage bankers. Amy Hoak reports today on the economic forecast provided at the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association held this week in Chicago. Jay Brinkmann, the MBA's chief economist, said interest rates on home loans will continue near record lows for the year ahead, and prices are expected to remain flat. Doug Duncan, chief economist for Fannie Mae, said he expects a 3% decline in home prices from now until early next year, excluding distressed sales, with prices then flat for the rest of 2012. And that means another weak year for the mortgage industry. But it wasn't all gloom: Economists said a good goal would be to take some of the distressed properties off the residential market, addressing a need in some communities for more rental properties while also stabilizing house prices. — Anne Stanley , Managing Editor, Personal Finance Fewer will get a mortgage next year Mortgage rates will continue to remain near lows for the year ahead, while home prices are expected to remain flat, the Mortgage Bankers Association's chief economist said Tuesday. And both are expected to do little to inspire anyone to buy a home. Read more: Fewer will get a mortgage next year. Columnist competition entries piling up MarketWatch is looking for the world's next great investing columnist — and it could be you. But if you're going to get in our contest, time is running out: First-round entries close Sunday. Read more: Columnist competition entries piling up. INVESTING Why isn't my BlackBerry working? If you've experienced BlackBerry outages, you're not alone. The multiday outage began Monday in several markets throughout Europe, Asia and South America. The company said the cause was a "core switch failure" within its network that was compounded by problems with a backup switch. The company put up a blog post Tuesday stating that it was working to "restore normal service as quickly as possible." The problem has now spread to North America, with reports of users in the U.S. and Canada experiencing connectivity issues. And Research In Motion shares took a hit Wednesday as reports of more problems threaten what some perceive as one of the company's key remaining assets. Read more: RIM outage may threaten remaining value. Stock gurus aren't what they used to be No one's making the kind of money that stars like George Soros, Warren Buffett or Julian Robertson could in the past. Maybe that's just bad luck, or maybe something more interesting is going on. Read more: Stock gurus aren't what they used to be. Economic recovery begins with forgiveness We are all still holding grudges for the failures of 2008 and 2009, But unfortunately, grudges are unproductive, and hurt the holder of them more than their target. It's time to forgive, writes Conor Sen. Read more: Economic recovery begins with forgiveness. ECONOMY & POLITICS Republican SEC official voices Volcker worries The Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday voted unanimously to propose a rule to limit bank speculative trading, though a Republican commissioner raised concerns about the measure's impact on liquidity and capital formation. Read more: Republican SEC official voices Volcker worries. Top forecaster sees sluggish growth, no recession The U.S. economy is locked in to a period of "sluggish but positive growth," said Mike Englund, chief economist for Action Economics and the winner of the September Forecaster of the Month award from MarketWatch. Read more: Top forecaster sees sluggish growth, no recession. Free-trade deals up for final Congress votes Free-trade deals between the U.S. and Colombia, Panama and South Korea are poised for approval by the House and Senate on Wednesday, after almost five years of negotiations. Read more: Free-trade deals up for final congress votes. Get the latest news on our mobile site: http://www.marketwatch.com/m MarketWatch has sent you this newsletter because you signed up to receive it. To ensure you receive this newsletter in the future, please add marketwatchmail.com to your list of approved senders. Sent to: kumaresan.selva.blogger@gmail.com Unsubscribe | Subscribe Copyright 2011 MarketWatch, Inc. All rights reserved. MarketWatch, the MarketWatch logo, and BigCharts are registered trademarks of MarketWatch, Inc. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy (updated 6/26/07). MarketWatch - Attn: Customer Service, 201 California St., San Francisco, CA 94111