Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!news.media.mit.edu!americast.com!usa-post Newsgroups: usa-today.real From: usa-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: usa-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: real Thu, Mar 12 1992 Date: Thu, 12 Mar 92 05:46:03 EST Message-ID: 03-12 0000 DECISIONLINE: Real Estate USA TODAY Update March 12, 1992 Source: USA TODAY:Gannett National Information Network VACANT HOMES AN URBAN BLIGHT: There are 71,824 vacant homes in Philadelphia. That's enough empty houses and apartments in this city to shelter the residents of Chattanooga, Tenn. But many vacant homes don't stay empty. The vacuum often is filled with crime and drugs, twin blights moving into the city's poorest communities. The abandonment is both symbol and cause of an urban disease spreading across U.S. cities. (For more, see special Cities package below.) GNMA TO SELL PORTFOLIO: GNMA has said that it's planning to sell its single-family servicing portfolio "beginning with the Guardian portfolio," according to President Raoul Carroll. The Guardian is a $5 billion to $6 billion servicing portfolio that GNMA seized from the New York Guardian Mortgagee Corporation when the issuer defaulted. GNMA will put the former Guardian servicing out for bids. PLAN WOULD HIKE MORTGAGE RIGHTS: The mortgage banking industry would face a sizeable tax hike if portions of the Democratic tax plan become law, according to industry experts. President Bush has vowed to veto the plan. The plan would impose a 35% top rate for taxes and would increase taxes on purchased mortgage servicing rights to pay for middle-class tax cuts. PTC TO ISSUE $15.7M REBATE: Participants Trust Company has announced that it will issue $15.7 million of rebates to its 54 participant-owners. That's more than twice the estimate of $6.5 billion rebated in 1991 based on PTC's 1990 figures. The rebate is based on income in excess of operating requirements for the GNMA depository. OFFICES COULD CLOSE: Five of Nebraska's 37 FmHA state offices are facing closure under a consolidation plan that also calls for the merger of two others, according to officials. Cited: Budget problems. The proposed county office closings are in Alliance, Falls City, Ord, Neligh and Ponca. Offices in Wahoo and Omaha would merge. HUD CALLS PROJECT SOUND: Department of Housing and Urban Development officials have rejected Detroit Mayor Coleman Young's plan to demolish most of the Parkside Homes project. The city says the project is obsolete but officials say the units are sound. FIXED-RATE MORTGAGES STEADY: The rates for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. were listed at 8.85% Wednesday, unchanged from Tuesday and up from 8.83% the week before. They were at 9.49% a year ago. For 30-year adjustable-rate mortgages, the rates were 5.99%, unchanged from Tuesday and up from 5.93% the week before. A year ago they were at 7.51%. ARM INDEXES UNCHANGED: The one-year Treasury ARM index rates were listed at 4.55% Wednesday, unchanged from Tuesday and up from 4.41% the week before. A year ago they were at 6.48%. For the 11th District ARM index, rates were at 6.002, unchanged from Tuesday and unchanged also from the week before. A year ago they were at 7.858%. T-BONDS INCREASE: Treasury security rates for the 30-year bonds showed an increase Wednesday, listing at 7.95%. That's up 0.05 from rates of 7.90% Tuesday and up 0.03 from 7.92% the week before. A year ago T-bonds were at 8.18%. SPECIAL PACKAGE ON CITIES: VACANCY RATES AT NEW HIGHS: Three decades of white flight and suburbanization have lifted vacancy rates to historic highs in many U.S. cities, according to the 1990 Census, pushing the national vacancy rate to about 7%, or 7.2 million houses. "Once the (first) building becomes vacant, that affects the quality of the neighborhood," says William Apgar, of Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies. EMPTY HOMES HASTEN DECLINE: The problem for many cities is not so much empty homes for sale or rent, but abandoned and boarded homes that spread blight and hasten a neighborhood's decline. "The thing we have to do," says Bennett Levin, the Philadelphia official in charge of boarding up abandoned housing, "is make sure that one house on the block doesn't become a cancer." COSTS MAY BE LOWERED: Philadelphia official Bennett Levin is lobbying the state's legislature for laws to cut the time it takes the city to foreclose on vacant properties whose owners - and their tax payments - have vanished. Levin also hopes to drop unnecessary requirements from building codes, shaving up to $20,000 off the $90,000 it costs to restore a 3-story row-house. (End of package.) Real Estate Editor: Beth Mann. (1-919-855-3491) Making copies of USA TODAY Update (Copyright, 1992) for further distribution violates federal law. This article is copyright 1992 Gannett News Service. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM