The law firm of Davidson Fink LLP recently announced that partner Heather C.M. Rogers is the new chair of the 4,877-member Real Property Law Section of the New York State Bar Association (NYSBA) for the 2011-2012 term. At Davidson Fink, Rogers manages the default operations department and is the primary client liaison for the firm. She also dedicates a portion of her practice to commercial and residential real estate and business and corporate law.

The debate over what constitutes a Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) is heating up, with a pivotal argument centered around whether or not the proposed QRM stipulations will actually lower the risk of default. In one corner you have the handful of regulators charged with putting the definition of QRM into the rule book, and in the other corner you have just about everybody else, with consumer advocates joining mortgage bankers in a rare showing, and congressional lawmakers standing firmly alongside them.

The phenomenon of strategic default has become a growing concern within the industry, but a new ""Market Insight Snapshot"" released by Experian Thursday suggests the percentage of mortgage defaults involving borrowers who decided to simply throw in the towel is trending downward. Since strategic defaults hit 20 percent of all mortgages 60-plus days delinquent in the fourth quarter of 2008, they've come in below that mark ever since, according to the study. By mid-2010, the share of intentional walk-aways was 17 percent.

After the headline news that home prices double-dipped, forecasters are predicting a 2011 turning point for the U.S. housing market, according to the investment and risk management firm MacroMarkets. The company polled 108 economists and real estate experts this month to gauge their predictions. Nearly two-thirds believe the bottom for home prices arrived in the first quarter or will arrive sometime before year-end. The consensus, though, is that we should not be expecting a rebound in home values, but rather a level of price stability.

Twenty-eight percent of homebuyers in California who signed their name on the dotted line last month are buying REO properties. At the same time, short sale deals made up some 19 percent of the state's pending home sales in May. These are the latest figures released by the California Association of Realtors. While the state's 48 percent distressed market share is significant by all accounts, some areas of California are nearly fully saturated in distressed sales. In Madera County, REOs and short sales claimed 90 percent of all pending sales last month.

Freddie Mac said Thursday that mortgage interest rates, while mixed this week, held steady at low levels for the second straight week. The 30-year fixed rate matched last week's 4.50 percent average, while the 15-year rate edged up to 3.69 percent.

Pro Teck Valuation Services announced this week that Dan Rizzotti has been promoted to director of quality improvement. He will report directly to Jeff Dickstein, the company's chief appraiser. Prior to his new position, Rizzotti was a senior account manager at Pro Teck. He is a certified appraiser with more than 15 years of real estate valuation experience across various sectors of the industry including origination, servicing, and capital markets.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says its all the distress in the housing sector that's pulling home prices and consumer confidence down and keeping buyers away from the market, despite the fact that the Fed's bond-buying program has succeeded in keeping interest rates low and housing affordable. Bernanke says he'd like to see more efforts to modify loans, but when that's not appropriate, the industry needs to speed up the process of foreclosure and disposition to clear the market.

Servicers have been ordered to institute a clear resolution process for consumer complaints. Accountability when it comes to dealing with distressed borrowers has become a central focus of mortgage servicing reform, but an audit conducted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency's inspector general found that the GSEs' regulator is itself lacking in this area. The report says the agency has let complaints alleging fraud, abuse, and improper foreclosures slip through the cracks with no oversight of their resolution. FHFA says it will take actions to remedy the issue.

Oklahoma-based a la mode announced this week that a second major technology provider has selected the company's Mercury Network to ensure compliance with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's Uniform Mortgage Data Program (UMDP). Lender Processing Services' LSI division is the latest to sign on to a la mode's system. Last week, the company said CoreLogic has also chosen its Mercury Network for appraisal management that meets the GSEs' requirements.