News

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the Ad Council have teamed up for a series of public service announcements (PSAs) in an effort to reach struggling homeowners and prevent foreclosures, HUD announced on Wednesday.

A Maryland jury has convicted Annika Boas, 37, for her role in a residential mortgage fraud scheme, U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein announced late last week.

Statewide, the median sales price for single-family existing homes in August was $181,000, Florida Realtors reported, up 3.4 percent year-over-year. The median price for townhouse-condo properties was $135,000, up 3.8 percent from a year ago.

Congressman Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas), Chairman of the Financial Services Committee, issued a statement on September 23 regarding the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to the effect that he believes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)'s data collection methods are intrusive and therefore not in consumers' best interests.

The burden of student loan debt is preventing potential home buyers from starting households, which in turn is hindering overall economic growth, according to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Richard Cordray at the Announcement on Public Service and Student Debt on September 23.

For the 12 months ending in July, FHFA reported house prices were up 4.4 percent. As of the latest index, the national HPI is now 6.4 percent below its peak in April 2007 and is roughly in line with its July 2005 level.

Two of the three component sub-indices improved through the summer: the measure of current market trends and conditions rose more than half a point to 62.7, while the measure of homebuying plans and attitudes toward homeownership climbed more than two points to 62.4.

Michigan-based real estate finance and credit industry law firm Potestivo & Associates recently announced the hiring of Art Sriratana as associate attorney. Sriratana will be working in the Foreclosure Department at Potestivo's Chicago office.

Plain City, Ohio-based mortgage field services provider A2Z Field Services was recently named to Inc. 5000's list of America’s Fastest Growing Private Companies for the second time in the last four years.

The department's argument came as a response to a late August filing by lawyers representing the megabank, who then said the government failed to conclusively prove that BofA's Countrywide unit misrepresented the quality of loans packaged and sold to the GSEs in the lead-up to the housing crash. In their own filing, Bank of America's team said argued "the evidence unambiguously showed that the ... loans sold to Fannie and Freddie were well within industry standards for loan quality, and thus Fannie and Freddie received exactly what they paid for."