HOPE NOW, the private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, non-profit counselors, and investors working to prevent foreclosures and keep homeowners in their homes, announced last week that it has begun a new initiative targeting seriously delinquent homeowners.

Mark DeGolyer and Ruthe Joyner DeGolyer had never purchased a home through a real estate auction before, let alone through an online auction, and like many people who consider the online avenue for a home purchase, the DeGolyers were nervous at first.

Under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, a tax credit of up to $8,000 is available for first-time home buyers. However, Alpharetta, Georgia-based Metro Buyers Group, LLC, argues that the problem for most first-time buyers is the down payment, and the new tax credit is only available to purchasers that have already closed on their home.

Montgomery County, Maryland and the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development announced last week that they will provide up to $450,000 to three non-profit organizations to support foreclosure prevention counseling.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently released A Look at Upstate New York’s Subprime Mortgages in Foreclosure:http://www.newyorkfed.org/regional/2009_Facts_Trends_Vol_2_1.pdf, a report intended to help local housing service providers identify the upstate counties with higher levels of subprime foreclosures and strategically design assistance programs for the expansive region.

President Barack Obama held a roundtable discussion in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Thursday with a group of homeowners who have recently refinanced their home mortgages, taking advantage of historically low interest rates.

Dallas-based Mortgage Search & Acquisition (MSA) announced this week that Chris Meyer will be joining the company as managing director of its new Phoenix office. MSA specializes solely within the mortgage banking and financial services industry, providing executive recruiting and acquisition services to its national client base for over 25 years.

As part of the administration’s plan to involve the private sector in efforts to purge banks of troublesome mortgage assets, government officials are encouraging large investment companies to create bailout funds – what some are calling the financial-crisis equivalent of the Liberty Bonds hawked by the U.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta (FHLBank Atlanta) announced last week that it will continue its initiatives to spur home purchases by providing potential homeowners with access to $9.9 million as part of its 2009 First-time Homebuyer Program (FHP).

Bank of America, which services one out of five mortgages in the United States, announced this week that it has begun processing its first wave of mortgage refinance applications under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Making Home Affordable program.