The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority announced this week that 35 percent of all its home mortgage customers have purchased REOs, a new record for the housing authority. So far in 2008, CHFA has closed over $100 million in mortgage loans for previously foreclosed REO properties.

The Mortgage Bankers Association’s Residential Technology Steering Committee (RESTECH) released a new white paper yesterday. It details the key fundamental concepts of industry data management, which MBA contends is one of the most important components in the mortgage banking process.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending August 22, 2008 today. The new stats show mortgage applications increased slightly from last week, when the figure hit its lowest level since December 2000.

USFN, a national, not-for-profit association providing legal default services to the mortgage banking industry, announced today that 54 of the organization’s members have been selected as part of Fannie Mae’s Retained Attorney Network.

Standard & Poor’s released its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices today, which show the trend of broad based declines in existing home prices across the United States continued through the first half of 2008.

The Mortgage Bankers Association today announced that Jay Brinkmann has been named the organization’s chief economist and SVP of research and economics. Brinkmann has been with the MBA since 2001 and has served as the organization’s VP of research for most of that period.

Two California-based companies, the Los Angeles Times Media Group and CataList Homes, in a joint national venture with global online auctioneer GoIndustry DoveBid, announced the launch of Zetabid yesterday.

iMortgage Services LLC, an independent national provider of collateral valuation and settlement services for the residential mortgage industry, has announced the release of its Tier3 comprehensive collateral reevaluation report service.

ModCo LLC has launched ModCo Solutions, a new division that the company says it created to help mortgage servicers cope with increasing foreclosures and changes in mortgage servicing laws. Foreclosures continue to climb to record levels, and the California-based company said it seeks to provide the infrastructure for servicers to not only meet existing and new regulations, but to reach out to troubled borrowers before foreclosure is the only option.

At the Federal Reserve’s annual policy retreat at the Teton Mountain resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Friday, Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned that there was no quick fix to the economic damage caused by the collapse of the housing market.