LenderLive Network Inc. has announced a strategic partnership with Customer Retention Solutions Inc. (CRS) that the company says will provide mortgage servicers with performance analytics and the targeted direct marketing and back office resources needed to originate and fulfill loan refinances and modifications.

The Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA) has expanded its preferred service provider program with Minneapolis-based Wolters Kluwer Financial Services to include the company's Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) and Regulation GG tool kits, as well as the company's suite of Regulation CC products.

The Florida Supreme Court has instituted a statewide managed mediation program to open up communication between lenders and distressed borrowers prior to foreclosure proceedings in the hopes of stemming the state's raging foreclosure problem.

Servicers who lower distressed homeowners's mortgage payments by reducing the principal balance, as opposed to just making interest rate adjustments, are much more likely to see the payments keep coming in and ward off a redefault, according to a new study published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

While the bumps and bruises of the housing meltdown are far from healed, the vitals do indicate it's on the mend, nonetheless.

The Treasury Department has lifted the $400 billion cap on the financial lifelines available to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as part of their conservatorship.

Record-low mortgage interest rates have provided a considerable boost to the housing sector's gradual recovery, with 30-year rates lingering at or below the 5 percent mark for a large part of 2009, according to Freddie Mac&'s Primary Mortgage Market Survey.

Residential property values continued to show further stabilization with prices rising for the fifth consecutive month in October, Standard

The Law Office of Patrick D. Hendershott, LLC, a firm specializing in bankruptcy and foreclosure, has added attorney Stanley Green as of counsel and manager. Green will manage the firm’s new Northeast Ohio branch in Cleveland.

The Treasury has agreed to shell out another $3.79 billion to GMAC Financial Services as part of a third bailout transaction that will give the government a 56 percent ownership stake in the company.