BUSINESS DIGEST || First Place, Home Depot team up

First Place, Home Depot team up

WARREN

First Place Bank and The Home Depot announced a joint venture to help home buyers.

The two will join together and help home buyers purchase properties that require significant improvements through one process.

“There’s a large inventory of ‘fixer-upper’ properties available for sale right now. But the procedure to secure financing and ensure that the renovation meets underwriting guidelines used to be cumbersome,” said Bruce Wenmoth, Executive Vice President Mortgage Lending for First Place Bank, in a release.

Once the buyer selects a home, First Place will help secure a loan through FHA 203k or Fannie Mae’s Home Path Renovation program.

Patent system to face major overhaul

washington

The House on Wednesday took up the most far-reaching overhaul of the patent system in 60 years, a bill that leaders in both parties said would make it easier for inventors to get their innovations to market and help put people back to work.

The legislation, supported by the Obama administration and a broad range of business groups and high tech companies, aims to ease the lengthy backlog in patent applications, clean up some of the procedures that can lead to costly litigation and put the United States under the same filing system as the rest of the industrialized world.

Debt-crisis warning

washington

A new report says that the national debt is on pace to equal the annual size of the economy within a decade, levels that could provoke a European-style debt crisis unless policymakers in Washington can slam the brakes on spiraling deficits.

The Congressional Budget Office study released Wednesday offers a fresh reminder of what’s at stake in ongoing talks led by Vice President Joe Biden that are aimed at slashing more than $2 trillion from the federal deficit over the coming decade as the price for permitting the government to take on more debt to pay current obligations.

Staff/wire reports