Bank of America is making changes to its short sale procedures and introducing an improved task flow within the short sale technology module from Equator, BofA's short sale management platform of choice. The goal: to reduce the timeframe for a short sale decision to less than three weeks. Starting Saturday, April 14, real estate professionals working with BofA will be required to submit five documents for short sales initiated with an offer, and they will be able to complete tasks such as document collection, valuations, and underwriting at the same time.

Mortgage lenders remain cautious in terms of credit quality, down payments, and valuations, as evidenced by the findings outlined in the new Origination Insight Report generated by Ellie Mae. The report series tracks the current lending environment for refinance and purchase mortgages, and it indicates the average credit score for loans approved and closed is steadily rising, while acceptable loan-to-value (LTV) ratios are declining. Ellie Mae says mortgage loans closed in February carried an average credit score of 750, with an LTV of 76 percent.

The general policy of the Federal Reserve is that banks should make every effort to dispose of foreclosed properties and get them off their books as quickly as feasibly possible. However, holding onto these properties and renting them out to tenants may be the way to go ""in light of the extraordinary market conditions that currently prevail,"" the Fed said Thursday. Provided their REO rentals constitute community development under the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), lenders will receive favorable CRA consideration for this course of action.

The valuation firm Clear Capital released the results of its home price forecasting models Thursday. The company expects residential property values at the national level to begin to show slight increases over the next three months, ending the year with a growth rate of 1.2 percent. Clear Capital's diagrams depict the valley shape with current prices at the bottom and a subtle upward trend from March through December of 2012. Markets in the southern part of the country are expected to perform the strongest.

FICO's quarterly survey of bank risk professionals found a reversal in the sentiment of U.S. lenders, with expectations for loan repayments more upbeat in the first quarter of 2012 than they had been during the previous quarter. The results show fewer lenders are anticipating a rise in delinquencies on home loans than at any time since FICO launched its survey in early 2010. When asked about the availability of credit, however, the credit gap persists in housing, with lenders still unsure about the real estate sector.

RES.NET announced Tuesday that the company has launched a custom tasking enhancement for all its software applications. The company calls the new feature ""revolutionary,"" enabling servicers and asset managers to create fields and customize tasks and workflows on the fly without being impacted by development constraints or quality assurance issues. Custom tasking enables users to add fields to track regulatory changes, tasks to cover process changes, or workflow assignments to solve departmental inefficiencies - all within minutes.

Despite the fact that key market indicators released in recent weeks have shown declines in home sales, anecdotal reports from real estate agents in the field suggest better days are ahead for the industry, according to commentary released Monday by the economic team at Wells Fargo Securities. Most agents are reporting ""significant gains in buyer interest and sales,"" and as a result, Wells' economists have nudged their forecast for home sales slightly higher. They are expecting sales of existing homes to top out at 4.50 million in 2012 and rise to 4.65 million in 2013.

The city of Los Angeles, California, is putting its Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) funds to work with the launch of a new initiative to create jobs rehabilitating foreclosed properties in communities impacted by the housing crisis. The new ""Bridges to Business Success"" program is a public-private initiative providing small minority business owners with procurement training and contract opportunities to create and retain jobs. Los Angeles has been awarded $143 million in NSP funds.

Home prices in many areas are already rebounding from the bottom of the market, according to the March HomeValueForecast.com update from Pro Teck Valuation Services. This month, the company explores the turnover rate, which is the number of non-distressed sales divided by the total housing stock in a particular market. Pro Teck says this calculation is one of the most powerful and, yet, simplest leading indicators of the future direction of home prices, with the turnover rate hitting bottom six to 18 months before the bottom in home prices.

Tuesday's S&P/Case-Shiller release on home prices was labeled ""disappointing"" by a number of analysts and market participants as both the 10- and 20-city composites and eight cities set new cycle lows. With the Case-Shiller numbers failing to fit the mold of improving market conditions, several commentary notes from analysts dismissed the latest results as ""old news,"" with a two-month lag time and home price assessments based on three-month averages. S&P's index committee chairman took to the web to defend the Case-Shiller report against naysayers.