California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 133 into law last month. The bill, sponsored by the California Land Title Association (CLTA), goes into effect on January 1, 2009 and requires that title insurance sales people be registered with the state.

First American Title Insurance Company announced yesterday that Mark S. Webber has been named state manager for Nevada. Webber, who also has served as Utah state manager since joining the company in 2004, will now oversee all of First American’s direct and agency operations in both states.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced that 400,000 homeowners have refinanced their mortgages with HUD’s affordable mortgage insurance program. Since expanding its refinance program in September 2007, HUD’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has helped more distressed homeowners keep their homes by utilizing FHA’s safe and affordable mortgage financing.

Melville, New York-based Lend America recently rolled out a specialized program that it says will enable institutional investors, such as Wall Street banks and hedge funds, as well as other first lien holders to quickly recapture principal from their non-performing residential mortgage portfolios.

Champion Mortgage, a division of Nationstar Mortgage LLC, announced the launch of its REO Financing Partner Program yesterday. The program, developed specifically with today’s distressed market conditions in mind, has shortened turn times on REO foreclosure sales by 30 percent, which in turn has helped decrease loss severity on REO properties by over 10 percent, the company said.

Standard & Poor’s released its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices yesterday, reporting on data through August 2008. The study is considered one of the leading measures of U.S. home prices and shows continued broad based declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the country – a trend that prevailed throughout the first half of 2008 and has continued into the second half.

According to a report on PR Newswire earlier this week, mortgage fraud activity dropped during the third quarter. This conclusion was based on data from the FraudBlogger Index published by MortgageDaily.

Mortgage bankers and servicers require a comprehensive, flexible, and scalable REO management system that integrates with their own in-house and third party systems to provide automated workflow management and high visibility throughout the property management life cycle.

There’s no shortage of issues the presidential candidates must be prepared to contend with if elected – with the foreclosure crisis and what to do with the secondary mortgage market ranking close to the top of the list.

Earlier this month, DSNews.com reported that a Cook County, Illinois sheriff had suspended all foreclosure evictions in his jurisdiction because of the growing number that involved renters. Since then, Sheriff Thomas J.