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Last Wednesday, February 1, President Obama announced the details of a plan to help homeowners refinance their mortgages in hopes of bolstering the housing market. According to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, this proposal will allow buyers to save an average of $3,000 a year by refinancing into loans backed by the FHA, if they are current on their mortgage. The plan is estimated to cost between $5 billion and $10 billion, which Obama plans to cover by pressing a fee on large banks.

The federal government is planning a major new initiative to convert foreclosures into rentals. But as Greg Rand (@gsrand), CEO of OwnAmerica and host of Rand on Real Estate on WABC Radio in N.Y. explains,

Every home—whether it’s a resale or new—has some kind of an issue, and the reality is that there is no “perfect” house. Many homebuyers embark on their search for a home with the belief that new homes should be flawless, when this is never actually the case. Problems are found in all homes, but the issues with new homes are totally different than the defects found in resale homes. When evaluating a resale home, most problems are often related to older systems that are near the end of their service life. On the other hand, problems in new homes typically involve incomplete work, damaged systems, missing pieces of key materials and imperfect workmanship.

Setting yourself apart from your competition is becoming increasingly difficult. The emergence of social media into the business world has created platforms where constant, ongoing contact is possible. As a result of this desire to be in constant contact, many agents and brokers have struggled with what constitutes valuable content. What do we post, tweet and send? If you think about it, the idea that your friends and acquaintances are sincerely interested in an up-to-the-minute play-by-play of your daily activities is somewhat absurd. This confusion in the marketplace creates real opportunities for leaders to emerge. When I say leaders, I mean thought leaders, market leaders, industry leaders and even neighborhood leaders.

(MCT)—Facebook has filed papers for what’s expected to be the largest initial public offering ever to come out of Silicon Valley and one of the largest in U.S. history. Ending months of breathless speculation, the 8-year-old social networking company has submitted registration documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that set a preliminary goal of raising $5 billion. Facebook is expected to be valued at $75 billion to $100 billion. Final pricing will not be set for months, and the size of the IPO probably will increase with investor demand. The filing sets the stage for an IPO in May.

Mortgage applications decreased 2.9 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending January 27, 2012.

A ProPublica–NPR news story recently suggested that a mortgage financing vehicle utilized by Freddie Mac may be preventing homeowners from refinancing. While FHFA does not typically comment on its supervisory activities, the circumstances here require some clarification, according to the FHFA, who issued the following response: Freddie Mac has historically used the structuring of Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (CMOs) as a tool to manage its retained portfolio and to address issues associated with security performance. A particular CMO structure employed by Freddie Mac resulted in the creation of “inverse floaters.”

(MCT)—The lower-than-expected annualized growth rate of 2.8 percent reported Friday for the final three months of 2011 raises doubts about the strength of the U.S. recovery, and concerns that 2012 may be another year of muddling along. Most mainstream economists had expected the fourth-quarter number to come in at 3 percent or higher, and the lower final number from the Commerce Department meant that the U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 1.7 percent for all of last year. That’s below 2010’s growth rate of 3 percent for the nation’s gross domestic product, the sum of goods and served produced in the U.S. economy. It points to a tepid recovery after the deepest downturn since the Great Depression.

Mortgage originations plunged 10.1 percent from November to December, continuing a decline from 2011’s September peak. At the same time, loans originated over the last two years have proved to be some of the best quality originations on record.

Regional Spotlight—Investors with cash continued to reap a harvest of bargain-priced bank-owned and short sale properties across the San Francisco Bay Area in the fourth quarter of 2011, sparking a slight uptick in home sales compared with the same period a year ago, according to an analysis of MLS data by the research division of Better Homes and Gardens Mason-McDuffie Real Estate. In the nine-county Bay Area, 12,404 existing, single-family detached homes changed hands during the fourth quarter of 2011, 49 more than were sold in the fourth quarter of 2010. The most recent figure was down 8 percent from 13,484 homes sold in the third quarter—normally among the most active periods for home sales and purchase activity.

While you may not always get what you want, you will almost always get what you expect. Surprisingly, the power of belief and expectation work just as effectively on your feelings of self-doubt and limitation as they do on your thoughts of success and achievement. Think thoughts of defeat or failure and you are bound to be discouraged. Belief is an incredibly powerful state of mind. Your belief system not only defines and shapes who you are, but it also determines your potential. Henry Ford was correct when he said, "Whether you think you can or think you can't—you are right." Your belief system, like your computer, doesn't judge what you input; it simply accepts it as the truth.

(MCT)—The Obama administration’s new effort to investigate the causes of the nation’s mortgage meltdown will focus on coordinating the often overlapping state and federal investigations and on holding accountable those whose misconduct led to the global financial crisis.

Low interest rates, as we all know, are making history. Last week, according to an article found on CNNMoney, “rates on both the 30-year and 15-year fixed loans fell to new records, at 3.89 percent and 3.16 percent, respectively, according to Freddie Mac.”

Remodeling sentiment rose to the highest level in five years, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ (NAHB) Remodeling Market Index (RMI) for the fourth quarter of 2011. Released yesterday, the RMI increased to 46.6 in the fourth quarter from 41.7 in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, the RMI component measuring current market conditions rose to 48.4 from 43.0 in the previous quarter. The RMI component measuring future indicators of remodeling business was also positive, increasing to 44.8 from 40.4 in the previous quarter.

In his recent State of the Union speech, President Obama announced he will push for legislation that will significantly expand the newly revised HARP program that allows underwater homeowners to refinance at today’s historically low rates.