The latest loan officer survey from the Federal Reserve shows a more positive outlook for certain sectors of the lending industry, but says little improvement is expected in residential real estate this year. Although, about 45 percent of banks responded that they experienced recent growth in their residential mortgage portfolios, despite weakened demand. Around one-third reported having originated a large amount of loans that are not eligible for guarantee by the Federal Housing Administration and cannot be sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Barclays Capital says that as servicers perform complicated modifications and other actions, remittance reporting has been found wanting. A recent study by the research firm examines typical remittance reports and points out flaws in the process, aiming to make a case for a complete overhaul. Barclays says current procedures sometimes make it difficult to understand where money is coming and going, and with some transactions the math gets fuzzy very quickly.

With all types of fraud steadily rising, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg's Financial Crime Task Force has set up two programs to help fight mortgage fraud in New York City. According to the CoreLogic Fraud Index, fraud losses for 2010 are estimated to be $11 billion, and according to the FBI, New York is one of the top ten states with significant mortgage fraud issues.

California's attorney general says the $6.5 million settlement from two former Countrywide executives will be used to establish a fund to help foreclosed homeowners. The settlement comes from a litigation that began more than two years ago against Angelo Mozilo and David Sambol. According to the lawsuit, Countrywide lured buyers with low teaser rates and failed to inform them of the downsides of adjustable-rate loans. The suit alleged that Mozilo and Sambol knew of these practices and did nothing to stop them.

Freddie Mac announced this week that its multifamily whole loan and bond guarantee business had approximately $15 billion in volume in 2010, down from $17 billion in 2009. The volume includes Freddie Mac's targeted affordable housing products. Last year Freddie Mac's multifamily business settled more than $13 billion through the GSE's conventional programs.

In more bad news for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), three congressmen, Reps. Jim Jordan, Patrick McHenry, and Darrell Issa have proposed a bill to end the program. Issa is chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee and introduced the bill at the committee's first hearing last week. HAMP took a beating at the hearing from the lawmakers. They called the program a ""colossal failure"" and said it's just one more example of why government interference in the private sector doesn't work.

This week, mortgage rates showed mixed results, according to a study released by Freddie Mac, which is compiled using data gathered from around 125 lenders across the country. Mortgage rate data released this same week from Bankrate, shows more steady rates, using data from the top 10 banks and thrifts in the top 10 U.S. markets.

Last year the Florida State Courts Administration asked its legislators for $9.6 million to try to clear its massive backlog of foreclosures. Since the courts received the money and began working through the backlog in July 2010, the state has cleared more than 110,000 foreclosures from its system. That, however, leaves more than 350,000 foreclosures to work through.

Though servicers seem to be having minimal success with the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), final 2010 data released by HOPE NOW shows that its members completed 1.24 million proprietary loan modifications last year. That number is more than double the 512,712 HAMP modifications completed by servicers last year. HOPE NOW's data show that there were 1.06 million foreclosure sales in 2010, compared to 1.76 million total loan modifications.

Last week, the special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program, released a report to Congress saying servicers are not doing all they can to help facilitate the process of keeping borrowers in their homes. To date there have been 1,025,907 homeowners rejected for HAMP modifications by the eight largest servicers, and there have been 572,655 canceled trial modifications, which typically occurs because of insufficient documentation, program ineligibility, or because the borrower missed payments.