In an announcement Tuesday, Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) said foreclosure sales for its lending and banking clients soared this past week in nationwide live and online auctions, which generated $47.4 million in sales on 625 foreclosed residential properties, commercial properties, and notes.

Various HOPE NOW servicers, including Bank of America, Chase, Citi, GMAC, Suntrust, Wells Fargo, and others, assisted more than 1,300 troubled borrowers during three homeownership preservation events held across the Pacific Northwest last week. According to HOPE NOW, 532 families attended the first of the three events, which was held in Portland, Oregon on March 23. And the two-day event in Bellevue, Washington on March 25 and March 26 saw an additional 796 homeowners.

As part of an effort to provide technology solutions for RESPA challenges, Caliber Funding, LLC, a national wholesale and retail lender based in Tucson, Arizona, has launched an originator forms feature on its proprietary software system, H2Online. The new feature provides fully-completed, signature-ready documents with a single click, the company said.

The delinquent unpaid balance for commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) increased to $47.82 billion in February, according to investment rating agency Realpoint, LLC. The overall delinquent unpaid balance was up almost 300 percent from February 2009, when only $11.98 billion was reported. Last month's numbers represent a delinquency ratio of 6 percent, and Realpoint says it expects the growth trend to continue, potentially reaching 12 percent by year-end.

Pacific Union International, Inc., a real estate firm headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, announced Monday the appointment of Patrick Barber as president of the company. In his new position, Barber will be responsible for executing the company's San Francisco growth strategies, including office expansion, recruiting, and marketing.

Marshall & Ilsley Corporation (M&I), a diversified financial services corporation headquartered in Milwaukee, announced Monday that it has extended its foreclosure moratorium an additional 90 days - through June 30, 2010. The moratorium is on all owner-occupied residential loans for customers who agree to work in good faith to reach a successful repayment agreement, and it applies to applicable loans in all M&I markets.

In hopes of stimulating the local housing market, Broward County in South Florida, which had the state's third-highest foreclosure rate in February, recently launched a new Web site to auction off foreclosed homes. The first online auction will take place on March 30, 2010.

The Treasury Department's supplemental directives for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) have placed increased requirements on lenders and servicers helping distressed borrowers. But Houston-based Stewart Lender Services (SLS), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Stewart Title Company, recently announced its ability to help national lenders and services comply with these directives in a timely, cost-effective manner.

For many investors, owner-occupancy is considered to be a leading indicator of loan and deal performance and an important criterion for determining if loans are eligible for modification. But according to Equifax Capital Markets, owner-occupancy data reported at origination is typically out of date, and increased mortgage fraud among recent loan vintages has called this information into question.

Mortgage fraud remains a major problem in many U.S. cities, but the fight against it is growing. Last week, representatives of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force met in Phoenix for the second of a series of Mortgage Fraud Summits, marking an important step in the task force's collaborative effort to combat mortgage fraud and protect American homeowners. The U.S. attorney general has allocated nearly $8 million in federal funding for mortgage fraud enforcement.