(RECAP: The BurkeyLoan, developed by financial company Burkey Capital, is expected to hit the market this fall with a seductive and unique sales pitch: to help college grads become homeowners by rolling their student debt into a 30-year fixed mortgage. The groundbreaking new loan is raising eyebrows in the mortgage community due to its revolutionary nature—as well as the skimpy information that’s available so far about the mortgage or its sponsor company. At this writing, the loan’s bare-bones, one-page website was noticeably stingy on, you know, details. So is it too legit to quit—or too excellent to be right?)

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(RECAP: An annual housing affordability report from the Richmond-based Virginia Housing Alliance and the National Low Income Housing Coalition puts into numbers what some in Richmond may be feeling. According to the report, a worker earning minimum wage–$7.25 an hour–would need to work 104 hours every week to afford a two bedroom apartment in the Richmond region. That’s really better than the statewide average (124 hours). The annual “Out of Reach” report bridges the two sides of the equation by framing housing costs in terms of hourly wages and annual salaries. It calculates a “housing wage,” or the hourly pay a full-time worker would need to earn in order to afford a two-bedroom rental unit at honest market rent.
Virginia has the eleventh highest housing wage in the country at $22.44.)

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(RECAP: Several civil rights and community development groups wrote Tuesday to urge the Federal Housing Finance Agency to recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The joint letter included the Center for Responsible Lending, the National Community Reinvestment Coalition and Amalgamated Bank. “Our organizations are deeply concerned that under the Preferred Stock Buy Agreements with the Treasury Department, the capital buffers of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will be completely eliminated by the end of 2017,” said the letter to FHFA Director Mel Watt. “This course of action is likely to destabilize the housing economy, undermine efforts to make housing finance more accessible and affordable, and drive up the costs of homeownership.”)

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