Richmond, Virginia-based LandAmerica Financial Group, a company dedicated to real estate transaction services, said Tuesday that B. Shannon Cobb has been promoted to the position of group senior vice president of product services.

The Federal Reserve Board on Tuesday asked for input on a new proposal the agency wants implemented under the guidelines of the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA). If put into effect, the Federal Reserve says the guidelines will curtail irresponsible lending in the marketplace.

Colorado Governor Bill Ritter said this week that he intends to aggressively implement state legislation that’s partly designed to crack down on prepayment penalties. In a press release, Governor Ritter’s office said enforcing four separate bills that make up the Mortgage Broker Registration Act will help borrowers who are dealing with aggressive pre-payment penalties before those penalties drag them into foreclosure.

The Office of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley= has told residents the city will no longer wait six months before sending notices of foreclosure to distressed borrowers. Instead, Chicago’s Mayor says the city will send information on loss mitigation to homeowners as soon as their lenders file against them.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has released a statement, saying the association supports the U.S. Senate’s recent passage of the FHA Modernization Act of 2007. NAR says the act’s passage means there’s now room to implement some of the measures the association has long felt were necessary and beneficial to the pursuit of homeownership.

Dallas, Texas-based MRG Document Technologies, a company known for providing documents to the financial services industry, is now offering loan modification agreements to financial companies who are involved in a slew of loss mitigation efforts.

UBS is facing a class action lawsuit, which alleges the financial services company misled investors by issuing materially false and misleading statements about the company’s financial condition just two months before it was revealed UBS was planning to write down $10 billion in subprime-related losses.

Tampa, Florida-based Mortgage Contracting Services), an inspection services and property preservation provider, has named Caroline Reaves president and chief operating officer of Mortgage Contracting Services.

The law firm of Weltman, Weinberg & Reis), which provides default services, as well as title services through two affiliated agencies, announced Friday that its title agencies will be merged into one unit under one name—Thoroughbred Title Agency Inc.

A new study, compiled and published by Randal O’Toole, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, claims a new type of taxation contributed to the housing bubble and its subsequent burst. The type of taxation in question is not a tax at all, but rather aggressive government involvement in an area’s planning and zoning requirements and laws.