Michigan-based default services law firm Fabrizio & Brook, PC, has announced the addition of attorney Cheryl D. Cook to its litigation team and the promotion of Stefan Zaryczny as the firm’s director of information technology.

A nationwide survey of real estate investors bidding on properties offered for auction during the fourth quarter of 2014 revealed that flipping was the preferred investing strategy over renting, according to Auction.com's Q4 2014 Real Estate Investor Activity Report. Though various reports have suggested in the last year that flipping opportunities are dwindling, Auction.com's latest survey affirms that flipping is still going strong: 50 percent of investors said they intended to flip the homes they purchased, compared to 47.3 percent who said they intend to rent them out (2.7 percent were undecided).

HOPE NOW Non-foreclosure solutionsThe gap between non-foreclosure solutions and foreclosures widened even further in November 2014, according to data recently released by HOPE NOW, the voluntary private sector alliance of mortgage sevicers, investors, and non-profit counselors.

Freddie Mac cited a number of positive opportunities for housing to start 2015, but households and businesses should take advantage of them because those opportunities may be limited, according to the GSE's January 2015 U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook released on Tuesday.

Four national banks agreed to pay a combined $2.7 million in penalties to resolve claims that they unlawfully foreclosed on properties in Massachusetts, according to an announcement from Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley.

The nation's leading online real estate marketplace, Auction.com, has announced the addition of two executives, Rob Behrend and Hauke Schupp, to its single-family residential division.

Default services law firm McCalla Raymer announced the opening of four new offices in Georgia to serve its residential closing department, and at the same time announced the addition of three new partners, Pilar Gigante, Heather Ison and Deb Kalish, to the firm.

Two economists from the Detroit branch of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago will lead an economic forecast discussion on Thursday, January 22, in Flint, Michigan, according to an announcement from Baker College of Flint Center for Business. Senior economist Paul Traub and business economist Martin Lavelle, both of the Detroit branch of Chicago's Fed Bank, will lead the discussion, which will take place from 6 to 8 p.m. at Baker College in Flint on Thursday

New York-based credit rater Kroll Bond Rating Agency (KBRA) has updated its residential mortgage default and loss model, incorporating a new methodology that projects loan-by-loan default, loss, and prepayment on residential loans in order to track non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS), KBRA announced. The new methodology uses revisions that reflect additional data analysis and evolving origination trends, and is an update to KBRA's RMBS model methodology originally released three years ago in January 2012.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Julián Castro will answer questions about a variety of housing topics in a fireside-chat style event on the morning after President Obama's state of the union speech on Wednesday, January 21, at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.