An activist for the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) has been charged with fourth degree burglary for helping a Southeast Baltimore woman break into her former home last week as part of a protest demonstration against foreclosures.

Aaron L. Squyres has been appointed partner at Wilson & Associates, PLLC. Squyres is the supervising attorney of the firm’s litigation division and has been a member of Wilson & Associates since 2003.

Neil Barofsky, special inspector general for the $700 billion federal purse formerly known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), told congressional leaders on Tuesday that the government’s bank rescue efforts could be vulnerable to fraud, potentially stripping taxpayers of tens, maybe hundreds of billions of dollars.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) today released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending February 20, 2009. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, dropped 15.

To provide faster service and acceptance of loan restructurings, Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, a Carrollton, Texas firm specializing in saving seriously delinquent loans from foreclosure, has selected electronic mortgage solutions from Houston-based SigniaDocs.

RealtyTrac, a national online marketplace for foreclosure properties based in Irvine, California, and Caspio, Inc., a provider of a Web-based point-and-click platform for creating Web applications, today announced the launch of a new foreclosure Web application that features historical foreclosure activity data by state or by county and a real-time nationwide search of properties in foreclosure.

Mortgage Contracting Services (MCS), a provider of property preservation and inspection services to the mortgage industry, has named Michele Struckman as AVP of the company’s Tampa operations and Tracy Hager to VP of its Dallas operations.

Minneapolis-based Wolters Kluwer Financial Services recently announced that two members of its compliance management services team have earned the prestigious Certified Regulatory Compliance Manager (CRCM) designation from the American Bankers Association’s (ABA’s) Institute of Certified Bankers (ICB).

Home prices in the United States posted record declines in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA’s) House Price Index (HPI). The agency’s purchase-only HPI, based on data from home sales, was 3.

The nation’s four largest organizations of professional real estate appraisers—the Appraisal Institute, American Society of Appraisers, American Society of Farm Managers and Rural Appraisers, and the National Association of Independent Fee Appraisers urging the federal government to require that market values of homes rescued under President Obama’s Homeowner Affordability and Stability Program be determined by professional appraisers who are state certified and licensed.