Last month's 18.6 percent surge in existing-home sales from a year earlier had some market observers doing a double-take, but Galen Ward, who runs a real estate brokerage web site, says it wasn't unexpected. Michael Simonsen of Altos Research says anything is going to look good coming off the market's tax-credit hangover this time last year. But the fact that the median home price was down more than 5 percent from August 2010 at the same time sales jumped so sharply is one of the most telling stats for Clear Capital's Alex Villacorta.

New data released by Lender Processing Services (LPS) Tuesday shows the population of mortgages going unpaid in the United States contracted during the month of August. LPS offered the media a sneak peak at several key mortgage performance statistics slated for public release later this month. The company says there were 6,397,000 home loans at least 30 days delinquent or in foreclosure as of the end of August. That's down from 6,538,000 the month before.

Wall Street has long struggled with indexing and analyzing real estate as an international investment, according to Winans International, a California-based investment advisor and research firm. Winans International's market researchers Ken Winans and Dr. Bryan Taylor tackled the problem by gathering the data from 36 countries and developing an approach to combine these global studies of home prices into a single data set, tracking housing prices since 1975.

The state of California is cashing in on the last days of the traditional homebuying season, with sales soaring in August and the median home price touching on its highest reading of the year. The California Association of Realtors puts last month's median price point at a level not seen since last December, and home sales up more than 10 percent from last year. At the same time, unsold housing inventory statewide has declined to five-months' supply.

Liberty Title & Escrow Co. has added two team members in its new Denver, Colorado office. Susan A. Green has been named VP and operations manager, and Diahnna Laverne is taking on the position of senior account executive within the sales department. Green joins the Liberty team with more than 12 years of management experience, including various roles in the title insurance field. Laverne previously worked with Affinity Title as a senior account executive and has been in the industry for 12 years.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will begin raising the fees they charge lenders for guarantees on mortgage loans next year. According to the companies' regulator, it's a step toward readying the market for private-sector reinforcements and weaning the nation's housing sector off of low-cost government support. FHFA's director says it ought to be clear at this point that the two mortgage giants will not be able to emerge from conservatorship. He argues that more progress should have been made on housing finance reform by now.

Total Mortgage Services, LLC, a Connecticut-based mortgage lender, has received approval from Fannie Mae to be a seller/servicer for one-to-four unit single-family first lien mortgages. The company explained that with the designation it can now retain mortgage servicing rights for GSE loans, as well as sell and pool loans into mortgage backed securities (MBS) and expand its product offerings.

Banks held about 476,000 homes that they repossessed from delinquent mortgage borrowers as of the end of July, according to Barclays Capital. That tally represents a 17 percent contraction from 574,000 REOs on the books just 10 months earlier, in September of 2010, just as the robo-signing scandal began grabbing headlines. According to Barclays' analysis, the average number of months a loan has spent in foreclosure has climbed from around 10 months just before October of last year to more than 12 months today.

Gerner & Kearns, Co., L.P.A. (G&K) recently announced that it has been designated by the FDIC as outside counsel in the states of Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio, and Michigan. The firm's practice areas include foreclosure, bankruptcy, evictions, origination and REO closings, loss mitigation, and commercial litigation with respect to the industry's residential and commercial portfolios.

Matt Martin Real Estate Management (MMREM) has named lending industry veteran Ivan Choi to the newly-created position of senior vice president. In his new role, Choi will be a key member of MMREM's executive and planning team, working directly with CEO and founder Matt Martin, as well as the management team of Sperlonga Data & Analytics, MMREM's affiliate company.