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More Americans are stretching to buy homes, the latest sign that rising prices are making homeownership more difficult for a broad swath of potential buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly one in five conventional mortgage loans made this winter went to borrowers spending more than 45 percent of their monthly incomes on their mortgage payment and other debts, the highest proportion since the housing crisis, according to new data from mortgage-data tracker CoreLogic Inc. That was almost triple the proportion of such loans made in 2016 and the first half of 2017, CoreLogic said. Economists said rising debt levels are a symptom of a market in which home prices are rising sharply in relation to incomes, driven in part by a historic lack of supply that is forcing prices higher.

A federal judge has thrown out the bankruptcy cases of three Maine housing companies tied to embattled developer Michael Liberty, the Bangor Daily News reported. The companies, which together own about 600 units of low-income and senior housing across the state, filed last year for chapter 11 protection. Opposing counsel argued that the companies were abusing federal bankruptcy law in attempts to break contracts with their property manager. And the top bankruptcy judge in Maine appears to have agreed. Last Friday, Chief Judge Peter Cary dismissed the cases of Pine State Housing Series, LLC, Montfort Housing and Birch Ridge Limited Partnership. Liberty, who was recently released from a federal prison and is facing new allegations of scamming investors out of millions of dollars, is named in court documents as a “general partner” in each of the companies. Drummond Woodsum lawyer Jeremy Fischer represented the companies’ property manager, Stanford Management, and filed the motion to dismiss the cases. He said that the “bad faith” cases were also an effort by Liberty to line his own pockets.

Empty space in regional shopping malls reached a six-year high in the first quarter, adding further stress to regions being hit by a retail earthquake that is shaking up the job market across the U.S, the Wall Street Journal reported. The vacancy rate in big U.S. malls increased to 8.4 percent in the first quarter of 2018, up from 8.3 percent in the fourth quarter and the highest since the fourth quarter of 2012, according to real-estate data firm Reis Inc., which studies 77 metropolitan areas. Meanwhile, neighborhood and community shopping centers in 41 of the 77 areas experienced an increase in vacancy during the 12 months ending on March 31. Reis reported that retailers occupied 453,000 more square feet of shopping center space at the end of the first quarter than the fourth quarter of 2017, but that amount of “absorption” was the lowest for any quarter in more than five years. The completion of 712,000 square feet of new shopping center space also was “much lower” than average, Reis said. Read more. (Subscription required.) 

Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the forthcoming ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available for pre-order at the ABI Store. 

Brookfield Property Partners LP and GGP Inc. have reached an agreement for Brookfield to buy the remaining shares of the mall owner it doesn’t already own, a deal that would create one of the world’s largest retail real-estate companies, the Wall Street Journal reported. The deal is a sweetened version of the offer that Brookfield made for the roughly 66 percent stake in November. Brookfield currently owns about 34 percent of the company, formerly known as General Growth Properties. Under the agreement announced Monday, and unanimously endorsed by a special committee of GGP’s board, GGP investors could choose either $23.50 a share in cash or stock in either Brookfield Property or a new real-estate investment trust being formed. The offer is subject to proration based on aggregate cash consideration of $9.25 billion. The Brookfield deal marks the latest chapter in the saga of GGP, which went through a high-profile bankruptcy reorganization after the 2008 financial crash. It comes as the retail real-estate world is being rocked by investor unease caused by the growth of online shopping.

Mortgage servicers are about to have “more latitude” when it comes to dealing with borrowers entering or exiting bankruptcy, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced yesterday, HousingWire.com reported. The CFPB announced a final rule relating to certain borrowers facing bankruptcy. The rule was initially released by the CFPB back in October, but now the bureau is finalizing the rule. According to the CFPB, the final rule is the same as the previously released version. In an announcement, the CFPB explained that its 2016 mortgage servicing rules requires servicers to send modified periodic statements or coupon books to certain consumers in bankruptcy, beginning April 19, 2018. The rule also dealt with the timing for servicers to move from providing or ceasing to provide modified periodic statements to consumers entering or exiting bankruptcy.