Fourth quarter 2008 home prices declined for the eighth consecutive quarter, and according to a Zillow Home Value Index, the 11.6 percent decline cost American homeowners a total of $1.4 trillion in home value, bringing the total drop in value for 2008 to $3.

The surge of mortgage applications the industry has seen during the past few weeks seems to have cooled off, as the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) Market Composite Index dropped 38.8 percent from to 732.

There were many surprises in 2008. From the collapse of the housing market to the election of the country’s first African American president, Americans saw and experienced a lot. But what was most unexpected was the $700 billion government bailout of Wall Street’s financial institutions, according to a TrueCredit.

Fannie Mae will need as much as $16 billion from the Treasury Department to avoid posting a loss in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to an Securities and Exchange Commission filing. The announcement comes just days after Freddie Mac filed a similar report indicating it would as for as much as $35 billion to keep it solvent.

A surge in sales volume in the West sent existing home sales on an unexpected upswing and brought inventory down, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The existing home sales annual rate – a statistic derived from what the number of home sales would be for if a particular month’s pace was maintained for a year – jumped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.

Freddie Mac will need $30 to $35 billion from the U.S. Treasury Department to avoid posting a loss for the fourth quarter of 2008, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission report filed Friday.

Fannie Mae has begun laying off hundreds of employees at its Washington, D.C. office to make room for more employees at its Dallas, Texas anti-foreclosure office, according to multiple media reports. Affected employees include those that worked in technology, administration, communications, and the company’s single-family unit, which buys and bundles mortgages for securities.

Elizabeth Koepke has been appointed VP of the audit division and lead general council at the Walnut Creek, California-based National Loan Auditors (NLA). NLA provides quality control, pre-close and post-close auditing, risk assessment consulting, and fraud prevention to the mortgage, legal, and banking industries.

The city of Brooklyn Center, a suburb of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, is taking a unique approach to helping find new buyers for foreclosed homes, according to a report in the Minneapolis- St. Paul Star Tribune.

Foreclosures are a life-altering event for every member of a family, including the four-legged ones, who many times get left by families that simply can no longer take care of them, or don’t know where to turn for help.