When Woodward Asset Capital, a Michigan-based company focusing on real estate acquisition and sales, found it difficult to buy distressed homes in bulk, the company's founders came up with a new plan. Ronald Jasgur, Rodney Carey, and Gerald Kazakov decided to buy the worst houses in the best neighborhoods and get them back on track. The company buys what it describes as the most dated and ugliest homes and rehabilitates them. One official in White Lake says Woodward's efforts saved his community.

According to Auction.com, investors and buyers spent $112.9 million on assets at five of its auction events for primarily non-performing commercial real estate and notes last month. The auction offerings included 155 assets within 34 states and drew 990 registered bidders. The company says its February results are a strong indication of investors' appetite for real estate.

The creditors' rights law firm Weltman, Weinberg & Reis Co., L.P.A. added three new associates and a junior partner to its ranks last month. The firm welcomed Lisa M. Rogers as a junior partner within the foreclosure and evictions group in Ft. Lauderdale. Amy McGrotty, associate, and Damian A. Valladares, associate, also joined the Ft. Lauderdale office as part of its real estate default group. Associate Robert E. Altman, III, joined the real estate default group in the Cincinnati office.

While nationwide figures are trending lower, foreclosure rates in Phoenix, Arizona, are climbing again, according to a new report from the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University. The university study found that although foreclosures decreased to 30 percent of transactions in the single-family home resale market in the Phoenix area at the end of 2010, that rate shot up to 43 percent in January with little to no change in February.

Field Asset Services (FAS) now provides inspections services. With this new offering, FAS is expanding Collateral Command, the company's single source solution for all services required to manage foreclosed and REO properties. The company has fine-tuned the sometimes subjective and uncertain process of inspections to provide lenders and servicers with a ""fool-proof"" service, employing a national network of more than 6,000 qualified, full-time inspectors trained and experienced in property collateral and foreclosures.

Jones Lang LaSalle, a financial and professional services firm specializing in real estate, recently added three structured finance experts to its real estate investment banking (REIB) team. William Cavagnaro and Brion Haist joined as EVPs, and Jonathan Morris was hired as a managing director. Cavagmaro and Haist are responsible for advancing the firm's credit tenant lease (CTL) financing program. Morris will provide strategic advisory expertise to the firm's public and private real estate investment trust (REIT) clients.

The California State Department of Real Estate (DRE) focused its attention on upfront fees this week as it continued to warn consumers of persons illegally offering loan modification and mortgage relief services. Since 2008, the DRE has pursued more than 4,500 cases that involved loan modification complaints, resulting in 244 ""desist and refrain"" orders to stop illegal operations that name 785 separate respondents. The agency has also made more than 100 referrals to the California State Bar identifying attorneys involved in unlawful loan modification activities.

Maponics, a provider of location-based data, plans to offer a subdivision boundaries product for vast U.S. coverage, mapping more than 500,000 subdivisions by year-end. According to the company, the real estate industry has long recognized that the immediate area surrounding properties significantly impacts home values, but up until now has had no reliable and systematic source for subdivision boundary data.

Robert J. Hopp & Associates, a provider of legal, default, disposition, and title services, announced Tuesday that Karen Weaver joined its Albuquerque team as a supervising attorney. Weaver is a 20-year veteran of real estate, creditor bankruptcy, foreclosure, and commercial law litigation.

Standard & Poor's, a provider of independent credit ratings, indices, risk evaluation, investment research, and data, announced yesterday that Trepp clients now have access to S&P's CMBS research headlines via the Trepp platform. Trepp is a provider of CMBS and commercial mortgage information, analytics, and technology.