(The Wall Street Journal)  Though home prices have fallen dramatically as a result of the housing bust, paying the monthly cost of owning or renting a home hasn’t become any easier for many middle-income Americans families, a new study finds.

The study released Friday by the Washington-based Center for Housing Policy calculates the burden of housing costs for homeowners and renters with incomes of up to 120% of the median in their area by analyzing U.S. Census data.

Nearly 24% of those 45 million households spent more than half of their incomes on housing (including utilities) in 2010, up from about 23% in 2009 and 22% in 2008, the study finds. (It remains to be seen whether this trend will continue given the improving economic climate over the past six months.)

“Despite the fact that we’re seeing declining home prices across the country, housing isn’t becoming more affordable,” said Laura Williams, the study’s author and a research associate at the policy organization. The report noted that in 19 of the 50 largest U.S. metro areas the number of households with high housing cost burdens actually increased between 2008 and 2010.

Why? There are several reasons. Due to the rough economy, incomes for many families have fallen. The median household income of renters analyzed in the report fell to $30,229 in 2010 from $31,570 in 2008. For homeowners, the median household income fell to $41,413 in 2010 from $43,971 in 2008.

Meanwhile, rents have been rising. Plus, many homeowners haven’t been able to take advantage of record-low mortgage rates by refinancing their mortgages. That’s because they are “under water” – meaning that they owe more on their properties than the value of their homes.

The metro area with the largest share of households paying more than half of their income on housing was Miami, where 43% of households did so. It was followed by Los Angeles (38%), San Diego (37%), Riverside, Calif., (34%) and New York (34%).

The cities with the smallest share of households with a severe cost burden were Pittsburgh (15%), Buffalo (16%), San Antonio (17%), Rochester (17%) and Kansas City (17%).

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County clerks lack standing to sue Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems for recording fees on mortgage assignments, the U.S. Court for the Western District of Kentucky said this week.

Even though the case is not an appellate decision, it gives plaintiffs a glimpse at how one court evaluated a county recording-fee lawsuit against MERS.

In the case — Christian County Clerk v. MERS — the facts pleaded are similar to other complaints that popped up in Dallas County and jurisdictions in several states. Since last year, county clerks and local governments have been filing lawsuits against MERS, claiming the mortgage registry robbed counties of assignment recording fees on loans by transferring property assignments within the MERS system during loan securitization.

The Christian County clerk in Kentucky brought suit against MERS and several banking defendants, claiming the electronic registry violated state recording statutes by allowing parties to avoid county mortgage-assignment fees each time a loan is transferred.

The district court dismissed the complaint, ruling for MERS on the grounds that county clerks lack standing to sue MERS over assignments not filed at the county clerk’s office. 

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(Bloomberg) — Michelle Meyer, senior U.S. economist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, talks about U.S. existing home sales and the outlook for the economy and housing market. Sales of previously owned U.S. homes rose in January to the highest level since May 2010 as investors took advantage of lower prices to buy distressed properties.

(Bloomberg) — Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke speaks about the U.S. economy and housing market, and the central bank’s efforts to boost growth.     He speaks at the National Association of Home Builders International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Florida.

(The New York Times)  Bank of America said Thursday that it would no longer sell new mortgages to Fannie Mae, underscoring tensions in a fight between giants of the home loan market over billions in losses in the housing bubble.

The latest move represents a major escalation in a protracted legal battle over how many defaulted mortgages Bank of America will have to buy back from Fannie because the original loans had not conformed to proper underwriting standards, market experts said.

“In mortgage circles, it’s pretty big,” said Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, a trade publication. “It would be fairly extreme for a small or midsized lender to do this, but for a major lender, it’s very extreme.”

As one of the large government-sponsored mortgage finance enterprises, Fannie Mae takes mortgage loans from banks and packages them into securities that can be sold to investors or held on their own balance sheet. Fannie Mae backs about 40 percent of all mortgages in the United States.

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Overall, growth is expected to continue for the year, but at a modest rate, according to the Fannie Mae February 2012 Economic Outlook report.  Economic growth is projected to be at 2.3 percent for 2012, an increase compared to 1.6 percent last year, according to the report.  For the first time in seven years, the housing market is projected to contribute to gross domestic product (GDP), the report also stated, but by a very modest amount.

“Risks to the forecast are more balanced between the upside and downside since our January forecast,” said Fannie Mae chief economist Doug Duncan. “The economy appears to be more resilient than in previous months, and should be less vulnerable to shocks, including any spillover from the European sovereign debt crisis.”

Duncan added that economic growth will remain constrained by various headwinds, including a potential spike in oil prices; an expected decline in net exports; and an expected increase in fiscal drag, including the fading of federal spending from the stimulus and a decline in defense spending for operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

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