The median price of a distressed residential property, which is one that is either in the foreclosure process or owned by a bank, jumped up by 18 percent year-over-year in October, according to RealtyTrac's October 2014 Residential and Foreclosure Sales Report released on Wednesday.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced a policy change on Wednesday that would allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to sell existing REO properties to any qualified purchaser at fair market value, which would be determined by the companies.

Though regional and state unemployment rates changed little from September to October, 42 states and the District of Columbia saw year-over-year declines in their respective unemployment rates, according to the October 2014 Regional and State Employment and Unemployment report released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Freddie Mac will be adding loan-level actual loss data to its Single-Family Loan-Level Historical Dataset in order to increase investor transparency, the company announced on Monday.

As part of a continuing effort to wind down the government's Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to bail out banks devastated by the financial crisis of six years ago, the U.S. Department of Treasury recently auctioned off preferred stocks for three institutions, gaining $35.6 million in aggregate gross proceeds.

Wayne County, Michigan, has begun to execute the plan county officials announced in mid-October to start tax foreclosure proceedings on approximately 75,000 distressed properties for which the owners are three years or more delinquent on property taxes.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has announced its strategic plan for the fiscal years 2015 through 2019, reflecting the FHFA's priorities as a regulator and conservator of government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as well as regulator of the 12 Federal Home Loan (FHL) Banks.

Fannie Mae announced it has agreed to sell 44 foreclosed vacant properties to the Detroit Land Bank Authority as part of a partnership to stabilize neighborhoods in the greater Detroit area, which has seen a dramatic spike on the number of foreclosures in the last two years.

Clearfield, Utah-based field services, property inspection, and property preservation company Sentinel Field Services has announced the hiring of Dallan Jones as the company's new IT manager.

Irvine, California-based comprehensive real estate data provider RealtyTrac has announced the launch of an expanded version of its MEGA Lead Generation Platform.