St. Louis-based, Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative, announced Wednesday that is has taken steps to ensure its members have the information and processes in place that are needed to comply with the SAFE Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).

As a pilot initiative, HUD'S office of single family asset management (SFAM) will use New Berlin, Wisconsin-based Marshall & Swift's (M&S) cost estimator data and solutions to provide repair, replacement, maintenance, or improvement costs on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) housing units, M&S recently announced.

In an announcement Wednesday, Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray said he has filed a lawsuit against New York-based Barclays Capital Real Estate, doing business as HomEq Servicing.

In an effort to help families facing a foreclosure in the midst of the holiday season, both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae made announcements today and suspended foreclosure evictions from December 19, 2009 through January 3, 2010. In Freddie Mac’s announcement, the company said it will suspend all evictions involving foreclosed, occupied single family and two to four unit properties that had Freddie Mac-owned mortgages.

Heading into 2010, the status of the commercial real estate market may not be so gloom and doom.

UnitedTech Lender Services (UTLS), headquartered in Irvine, California, made an announcement Tuesday regarding the launch of its new Web site, aiming to provide lenders, servicers, and the mortgage industry with an overview of the wide array of default loan servicing solutions available

On Thursday, Redfin, an online real estate broker headquartered in Seattle, expanded to Atlanta, organized its real estate agents into local teams to give customers a high level of personal service, and began alerting customers by e-mail when a listing sells in their neighborhood.

The foreclosure crisis is far from over, and these properties are weighing heavily on bank books.

The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) most recent Quarterly Mortgage Bankers Performance Report indicated profit margins for independent mortgage bankers and subsidiaries have narrowed.

In a recent announcement, the Government National Mortgage Association (Ginnie Mae) said it guaranteed more than $35.5 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) in November.