Government

Bank of America, which services one out of five mortgages in the United States, announced this week that it has begun processing its first wave of mortgage refinance applications under the U.S. Treasury Department’s Making Home Affordable program.

The New York Federal Reserve Bank purchased $30.425 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) from government agencies this week. Total MBS purchases since the Fed program began in early January now stands at $333 billion.

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley has filed a lawsuit and obtained a temporary restraining order against four defendants for their involvement in a foreclosure rescue scam. The complaint, filed in Suffolk Superior Court, alleges that Loan Modification Group Corp.

Last week, four regional community banks became the first institutions to pay the government back the bailout money they received through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), citing their concern over stringent conditions now attached to the federal recovery plan.

Freddie Mac released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS) on Thursday, which showed that mortgage interest rates rose slightly this week, though they remain at historically low levels.

Statistics show that more homeowners are falling behind on their mortgage payments as the economy tightens, and that even applies to the higher-quality, less-risky home loans owned by GSEs Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Federal regulators met this week to decide how to interpret and apply the results of the government’s bank stress tests, but said they will delay the release of their analysis until after the banks’ first-quarter earnings are issued so as not to confuse market reaction.

Santa Ana, California-based RealEC Technologies Inc., a provider of collaborative network solutions to the mortgage industry, recently announced surpassing a corporate milestone of more than 42 million real estate orders processed through its network, since the company was founded in 1998.

Last week, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) approved new, relaxed guidelines for mark-to-market accounting rules – a method of assigning values to financial instruments, such as mortgage-backed securities, based on the current fair market price for similar instruments.

Many lenders who sell their loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are hesitant to outsource the appraisal process to Appraisal Management Companies (AMCs), especially with the GSEs’ strict new Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) requirements set to take effect May 1st.