A slowing housing market and a significant increase in distressed borrowers has left more room for unscrupulous predators to find victims who are susceptible to the games of mortgage schemers. One such case out of California involves 19 defendants, who were recently indicted in a Sacramento United States court for creating a scheme in which distressed homeowners agreed to add an investor to their home titles in exchange for help in making their mortgage payments.

Dallas, Texas-based Sollen Technologies, a provider of loan pricing tools and products for the mortgage lending industry, recently announced that another small company with approximately five loan officers hopes to benefit from the implementation of Sollen’s Lender Online loan pricing tool.

A new report from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), which measures the amount of activity in the association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey, indicates that refinance activity rose significantly in the most recent survey when compared to the week prior.

Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) Fannie Mae is expanding an attorney-loss mitigation pilot program that the company launched last year after finding law firms to be very effective in their efforts to reach borrowers and assist them with their home retention needs.

A new initiative that allows Federal Home Loan Banks in America to purchase mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is expected to provide the marketplace with an additional $100 billion-plus in liquidity, according to the Federal Housing Finance Board).

Investment management firm BlackRock, Inc. and Highfields Capital Management have partnered to create a new company that will purchase distressed mortgage loans and use capital raised from private investors to form solutions that are designed to help both the lenders and borrowers.

Kansas City-based law firm Martin, Leigh, Laws & Fritzlen, P.C., announced Monday that the firm and its title insurance provider, MoKan Title Services, LLC, have been selected as one of the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s Top 10 Small Businesses of the year.

Claims of cronyism and ineffective leadership were levied against U.S. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Alphonso Jackson in a letter sent to the President of the United States on Friday. In the letter, two Democratic Senators specifically ask President Bush for Jackson’s resignation.

The Federal Housing Finance Board (FHFB) drew praise from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) on Monday when the agency said it will allow Federal Home Loan Banks to expand their acquisition of mortgage-backed securities in the GSE marketplace.

Bellevue, Washington-based law firm Routh, Crabtree, Olsen, P.S., a provider of services for the mortgage banking industry, was recently named a part of Freddie Mac’s Designated Counsel program—an honor that allows the firm to now accept Freddie Mac’s counsel referrals in the state of California.