United States Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Steve Preston today announced that the HOPE for Homeowners (H4H) board of directors has approved changes to the program, designed to help more distressed borrowers refinance into affordable, government-back mortgages.

iEmergent, a Des Moines, Iowa-based market research, forecasting, and advisory services firm for the financial services, mortgage, and real estate industries, today issued its Mortgage Volume Forecasts for 2009 – 2013.

National Loan Auditors (NLA) is a newly formed loss mitigation company based in Walnut Creek, California, providing quality control, pre-close, and post-close auditing, risk assessment consulting, and fraud prevention to the mortgage and banking industries.

In an environment where defaults continue to mount and home retention has become a mainstream issue, Florida-based Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS), a provider of integrated technology and services to the mortgage industry, has created RediMod, an end-to-end solution for streamlining the mass loan modification process and improving servicers’ ability to help delinquent and at-risk borrowers.

Job losses and economic uncertainty continue to impact the housing market in Illinois. According to the latest Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR) housing report, total home sales (which include single-family homes and condominiums) were 31,451 in the third quarter, down 21.

The debate between two federal officials — Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Chairman Sheila Bair — over whether to use money from the $700 billion bailout fund to help at-risk homeowners avoid foreclosure took center stage when both regulators testified before the House Financial Services Committee today.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released its 2008 Performance and Accountability Report yesterday, detailing progress made during fiscal year 2008 by the regulators of the country’s government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs).

The Wall Street Journal, LORE magazine and REAL Trends recently announced the results of their prestigious Real Estate Top 200, a national ranking of real estate agents and their companies sponsored annually by the three publications.

Single-family home prices in Rhode Island continued to deteriorate in September, with the median home price plunging 17 percent to $220,000 from $265,000 a year ago, according to the latest state report from The Warren Group.

Four out of five metropolitan areas recorded lower home prices in the third quarter from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) quarterly survey released today. In addition, NAR said, existing-home sales fell from the second quarter in 32 states.