Seriously past-due home mortgages continue to decline for the nation's largest mortgage company, continuing a 15-month path of descent. Fannie Mae says the share of single-family loans it holds that are 90 or more days past due or in foreclosure fell 8 basis points to 4.19 percent in April, and then dropped another 5 basis points to 4.14 percent in May. Fannie Mae says servicers completed modifications on 16,419 of its loans in May. For the first five months of the year, loan modifications total 84,133.

Treasury has released new numbers for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). New this month is data on the program's Principal Reduction Alternative (PRA). Servicers have cut principal balances on 4,938 permanent HAMP modifications under the PRA initiative. In addition, there are currently 16,017 HAMP trials in force that have also received principal write-downs. The median amount of principal reduced for active permanent modifications exceeds $69,000.

Timothy Massad has been confirmed by the Senate as Treasury's assistant secretary for financial stability, responsible for overseeing the implementation and wind down of the Troubled Asset Relief Program including initiatives to address the housing and foreclosure crisis. While Treasury has won several Senate confirmations in recent days, the Department is at risk of losing its topmost officer. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner has notified President Obama that he will resign if lawmakers don't raise the debt ceiling by the early August deadline.

Freddie Mac has issued a bulletin to servicers announcing changes to the company's default management requirements. The move is part of the Servicing Alignment Initiative announced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency in late April to bring both Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's procedures for handling past-due mortgages in line with one another. Freddie also alerted servicers that it plans to roll out a new modification solution for borrowers who defaulted on previous modifications and who are ineligible for HAMP.

The man charged with orchestrating possibly one of the most notorious mortgage fraud schemes in U.S. history has been handed a 30-year prison sentence. Lee Farkas, CEO of Taylor Bean & Whitaker, was told Thursday by a U.S. district judge in Virginia that his crimes merit three decades behind bars. Judge Brinkema said she did not detect ""one bit of actual remorse"" in Farkas. From 2002 through 2009, Farkas and his co-conspirators manufactured fraudulent mortgages and securities in a scheme that led to the collapse of Colonial Bank.

Home prices in the U.S. rose in May, marking the second straight month of gains, according to CoreLogic. The company says national home prices, including distressed sales, increased 0.8 percent. CoreLogic asserts that the spring buying season has brought with it more demand for non-distressed properties, which has contributed to the short-term gains in prices. Some are holding out hope that the consistent upticks are evidence the five-year long decline in prices may be drawing to a close.

Been waiting for the spring homebuying season to hit? According to a new industry report released Wednesday, it may be settling in. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) says contracts in place for sales of existing homes rose 8.2 percent in May compared to the trade group's upwardly revised reading for April and are 13.4 percent higher than in May 2010. NAR's latest reading marks the first time since April 2010 that contract activity has come in above year-ago levels.

There were 4,084,557 mortgages in the United States 90 or more days delinquent or in foreclosure as of the end of May, according to Lender Processing Services (LPS). With foreclosure sales at 78,676 at month end, the volume of seriously past due loans over-shadowed the number of completed foreclosures by 50 to 1. In fact, LPS says there are still significantly fewer foreclosure sales than there were before foreclosure moratoria were put into place last fall. The biggest drops have been seen along the East Coast.

The performance of first-lien mortgages serviced by large national banks and thrifts improved in the first quarter as troubled loans worked through the system, according to a report released Wednesday by federal regulators. Their analysis of servicing portfolios as a whole found that loans serviced for government agencies and the GSEs are outperforming those held by banks and thrifts on their own books. Nevertheless, delinquencies improved across all risk categories and for all asset owners, while newly started foreclosures declined sharply.

Bank of America will pay investors $8.5 billion to compensate them for Countrywide's dealings years before the subprime lender was acquired by BofA. The settlement resolves nearly all of BofA's first-lien repurchase exposure from Countrywide-issued bonds. It involves 530 trusts and $424 billion in securities. The company has also agreed to implement certain servicing changes, which will cost some $400 million. BofA says the cleanup will leave it with a loss for the second quarter, but the market has responded positively to the news.