Fannie Mae announced Wednesday that the company has hired Susan McFarland to serve as EVP and CFO, effective July 11. McFarland will also take a seat on Fannie Mae's executive committee. She joins Fannie Mae from Capital One Financial Corporation, one of the top 10 banks in America, where she was EVP and finance and principal accounting officer, and led a team of 500 professionals.

Home prices in the U.S. rose in April for the first time since last spring, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported Wednesday. The agency's House Price Index recorded a 0.8 percent seasonally adjusted increase between March and April - the first month-over-month gain since May 2010. The index is calculated using purchase prices of houses backing mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The shadow inventory of repossessed and soon-to-be repossessed homes not yet visible to the market has been trimmed, according to CoreLogic. The company reports that as of April 2011, the industry's shadow supply fell to 1.7 million units, down from 1.9 million a year earlier. CoreLogic attributes the decline to fewer new delinquencies and a high level of distressed sales, which has helped to reduce the deluge of foreclosure properties on a market already beset by a supply and demand imbalance.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle charges that it misled investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet. JPMorgan noted in a statement that its securities affiliate named in the SEC complaint ultimately lost nearly $900 million in connection with the deal. The SEC, though, says the company failed to disclose that the hedge fund involved in structuring the deal stood to profit if the assets defaulted.

Data released by Lender Processing Services (LPS) Tuesday puts the number of home mortgages that are delinquent or in foreclosure at 6,350,000. The company's assessment is based on mortgage performance statistics derived from its loan-level database through the end of the month of May. In April, LPS reported that there were 6,388,000 mortgages going unpaid. The month-over-month decline can be attributed to both a decrease in the national delinquency rate and a drop in foreclosure inventories.

Distressed properties accounted for just 31 percent of existing-home sales in May, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported Tuesday. The ratio of distressed homes - typically bank-owned or pre-foreclosure short sales - was down from 37 percent in April and 40 percent in March. A pick-up in non-distressed sales volume is typical for the spring and summer seasons, but last month, overall sales of previously owned homes dropped along with the distressed percentage to hit a six-month low.

MERSCORP, Inc., which operates the Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS) database, announced Tuesday that Bryan Kanefield has joined the company's executive leadership team in the newly created role of SVP and chief risk officer. Kanefield joins MERSCORP from Fannie Mae, where he was most recently a member of the senior leadership team responsible for building and managing key operational units of the Making Home Affordable program.

Markets across the country are in full-fledged correction mode. That combined with the prevalence of foreclosures has analysts at the research firm Capital Economics convinced that the double dip in home prices will continue throughout this year. In fact, they say the structural factors that are constraining demand, such as higher down payment requirements, probably mean that prices won't rise consistently until 2014. Capital Economics expects up to three million foreclosed homes to make their way to the market over the next few years.

Unemployment has pushed many homeowners to the brink of foreclosure. Housing analysts have become especially vocal about the effect of extended periods of joblessness on mortgage performance. The average duration of unemployment was 40 weeks in May. On Monday, HUD and NeighborWorks announced the roll-out of the Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program (EHLP) to 27 states and Puerto Rico, extending over $800 million to assist homeowners at risk of foreclosure because of a reduction in income.

Litigation related to mortgage servicing surged during the first quarter, after last fall's robo-signing issues raised questions about servicers' procedures and garnered widespread attention from mainstream media. Mortgage servicing litigation increased 88 percent over the first three months of this year, according to industry data released Monday. Investor-related litigation, however, eased, as did actions related to loan modification disputes.