Nov. 15 (Bloomberg) — Freddie Mac, the government- supported mortgage company, made it harder for some borrowers with second-lien home equity debt to refinance as it released guidelines for its version of the federal Home Affordable Refinance Program.

For a borrower with loan-to-value ratio of less than 80 percent, the McLean, Virginia-based firm will require total housing debt, including second loans, of less than 105 percent of a property’s current values, according to a notice to lenders posted on its website. Previously, there was no cap.

“The rationale is to manage risk better,” Brad German, a spokesman, said in a telephone interview.

President Barack Obama has said he directed Freddie Mac and rival Fannie Mae to expand their HARP programs to help ease the U.S. housing slump and aid consumers. The companies, which were seized by the U.S. in 2008, are detailing the changes today, after they were announced Oct. 24.

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Good afternoon—and welcome to the board. Your mission should you choose to accept it is to make decisions to better your building. The residents may not like you and, more importantly, may not like those decisions. Nevertheless, keep doing the job you’re doing. In a worst-case scenario, you will be sued. Perhaps more than once. Should anything go wrong, don’t worry; you’re protected by the board’s D&O insurance. Good luck.”

On-the-Job Protection

You volunteer to be on your co-op or condo association’s board. You do your best to help make the right decisions and make your building a great place to live. Unfortunately, one of your fellow residents doesn’t like a decision you made and takes you and the rest of the board to court. They are suing for thousands of dollars—maybe even millions. Your home, life savings and other assets are at risk if you lose.

With stakes like that, it would be virtually impossible for co-op and condo boards to find volunteers if there wasn’t some form of protection from lawsuits resulting from the decisions made by board members in the course of doing their job. Fortunately, that protection exists, in the form of Directors and Officers, or D&O insurance.

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Starting next month, a new large-scale tourism campaign will help drive more visitors to Lower Manhattan — spotlighting the area’s remarkable recovery in the nine years since the 9/11 attacks.

Set to begin June 1st, the global initiative will promote downtown neighborhoods, restaurants, shops, museums, and open spaces among local and international tourists in New York City. The campaign will include new tour itineraries, special offers at local hotels, multimedia advertisements, and discounts at shops, attractions, and the new “Downtown Culture Pass.”

Announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg last week, the NYC & Company-designed campaign is launching in anticipation of a major tourism surge downtown — where the 10th anniversary of 9/11 already is drawing scores of visitors to the World Trade Center area.

“In less than four months time, the eyes of the world will be on Lower Manhattan, as we commemorate the 10th anniversary of 9/11 and open the Memorial,” said Bloomberg. “An important part of the story of 9/11 is how Lower Manhattan has come back in the past 10 years. Today Lower Manhattan is one of the most vibrant neighborhoods in New York City. Our new campaign will help ensure visitors from around the world know about that vibrancy and have an opportunity to take advantage of all that Lower Manhattan has to offer.”

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By the end of June, the Port Authority Bus Terminal will be awash in graphics and light when a 6, 000 square foot stainless steel fabric embedded with LED lights wraps its way around the corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.  The technology, known as Mediamesh, was developed by GKD-USA, a collaboration between a German light engineer firm and an American metal fabric manufacturer. The product is only four years old and allows LED imagery to wrap around buildings without disrupting interior views to the outside. But in the case of the Port Authority, the mesh allows exhaust fumes to escape while masking several giant X-trusses, a facade hasn’t exactly endeared itself to New Yorkers.

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New York City lost fewer jobs than previously estimated as it emerged from the recession, shedding 141,300 jobs between April 2008 and September 2009, instead of the 179,000 previously reported, according to the January 2011 employment report from Eastern Consolidated. Since that September 2009 low, the city has experienced a net gain of 50,700 jobs — 18,000 of which were added in January 2011 — putting city employment levels at 2.4 percent below the April 2008 peak. The city’s real estate industry gained 600 jobs in January, putting employment in the sector at 5.4 percent, or 6,600 jobs, below peak levels from April 2008. Nationwide, employment across all industry is also 5.4 percent below its January 2008 peak, having shed 7.48 million jobs since then.

via TRD

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — As Congress debates the new rules of the road for the U.S. banking industry, some lawmakers have an ambitious proposal: They want to cut ATM fees.

Last week, a trio of Democratic senators led by Iowa’s Tom Harkin proposed capping automated teller machine fees at just 50 cents.

Currently, banks and other ATM operators are free to charge consumers whatever they want for using their machine. And backers of the amendment maintain that those who tend feel the brunt of those fees are lower- and middle-income Americans, precisely those who can’t afford it.

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By BOB TEDESCHI

MOST borrowers are facing a much tougher mortgage environment than a few years ago, but for those who are self-employed or own small businesses, maneuvering through a loan application can be even more arduous.

Before 2008 these borrowers, many of whom have difficulty documenting their income, often used what are known as stated-income loans. Lenders focused on credit histories and earnings estimates, circumventing the need for pay stubs or W-2s.

But during the mortgage crisis, stated-income loans became known as “liar’s loans,” because some borrowers falsely inflated their incomes, and qualified for more than they could afford.

Today, stated-income loans have nearly disappeared. Those still available through regional lenders like Hudson City Savings Bank come at a cost: interest rates around a quarter of a percentage point higher than conventional loans and down payments of at least 30 percent.

The self-employed borrower’s only choice, mortgage brokers say, is to submit two years’ tax returns and hope that they qualify for a conventional loan.

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By C. J. Hughes

At left: The canal, a narrow 1.8-mile, tilde-shaped waterway, includes bits of neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens. At right: The EPA plan would curb runoff and remove the sludge in the Gowanus Canal.

Last month, Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal became one of the most polluted places in the country, at least in the eyes of the federal Environmental Protection Agency, which named it to the infamous “Superfund” cleanup list.

While that environmental scarlet letter may not make for the most compelling marketing gimmick — New York’s Love Canal, whose toxicity led to the creation of the Superfund in 1980, is hardly prime real estate today — Gowanus probably won’t see its property values dip, according to many brokers, landlords and developers.

There are a couple of reasons for that counterintuitive assessment. For one, the neighborhood around the canal, a narrow 1.8-mile, tilde-shaped waterway, includes bits of established neighborhoods like Park Slope and Carroll Gardens.

What’s more, mopping up the mess from oil refineries, tanneries and raw sewage, which have contaminated the Gowanus since it was dug in the 1860s, will likely mean better things to come.

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post-free’s Flickr

After receiving a resounding rejection from the local Community Board last week, another blow was dealt last night to an ambitious $1.2-billion plan to turn the landmark Domino Sugar Refinery site in Williamsburg into a residential complex with 2,200 apartments and four acres of public park on the waterfront. At a public hearing held by Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, freshman City Council member Steve Levin came out against the project, which could spell much bigger trouble for developers than the Community Board’s vote, because Council members typically defer to the local councilmember on land-use issues. At last night’s hearing, an aide read from a statement explaining Levin’s objections:

The project is simply too big. Too big, too high, too many people. The plan would introduce over 6,000 new residents to the neighborhood, a nearly 25-percent population increase for the half-mile area surrounding the site. How does everyone get to work? [The L] train is over capacity during morning rush hour as it is.

An environmental impact study found the development would increase rush hour subway ridership in the area by 1,350 people and have a “significant adverse impact” on the transit system. Domino developers insist that increased ferry service to Manhattan would reduce that impact, as would a potential MTA plan to replace the M train with the V, theoretically giving Domino residents a direct link to midtown from Marcy Avenue and alleviating pressure on the L.

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This week, the Federal Reserve reaffirmed its intention to stop buying mortgage-backed securities, signaling the likelihood that the mortgage rates you can get today are as good as they’re going to be for a long while. Once the Fed stops buying, after all, rates are likely to go up.

And current rates are quite good. At about 5 percent, in fact, they’re so good that they’ve helped change the age-old debate over whether homeowners should make extra mortgage payments to pay off their debt well before their loan periods are up.

Back when rates ran at 7 or 8 percent, making extra payments offered what amounted to a guaranteed return on your money. When you’re ridding yourself of debt that costs you much less, however, it’s easier to imagine a future when you could more easily earn a higher return by investing those potential extra mortgage payments someplace else.

Meanwhile, at a time when just about everyone knows someone who is unemployed or who owes more on a home loan than the house is worth, keeping extra cash someplace more liquid than a mortgage seems like a safer approach.

So is the case against extra payments closed for good, given that so many people have locked in rock-bottom mortgage rates for the long haul?

The answer depends on two things: how likely you are to leave the extra money in savings and how good it would feel to wipe your debt out years earlier than your mortgage requires.

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