Loss Mitigation

Wells Fargo and the National Urban League have released the second edition of ""The Foreclosure Workbook: The Complete Guide to Understanding Foreclosure and Saving Your Home."" The resource offers information to aid homeowners behind on their mortgage payments. Through its affiliates that manage homeownership and foreclosure prevention programs, the Urban League will distribute about 7,500 copies of this latest edition to distressed homeowners across the country.

The nation's leading mortgage lenders are extending extras for short sale transactions employed as an alternative to foreclosure - both in the form of monetary incentives for borrowers and streamlined procedures for real estate agents. Wells Fargo has increased its financial relocation assistance to as much as $20,000 in states where the foreclosure process is lengthening. Bank of America is now allowing agents to submit a new backup offer for a short sale property if the original buyer has walked away.

The Association of Mortgage Investors has sent letters to a handful of large banks expressing concerns on behalf of its members who hold residential mortgage-backed securities certificates. The mortgage investors called for enforcement of repurchases based on what they described as ""significant breaches"" of representations and warranties that have been discovered in the underwriting of loans, and voiced concerns that servicers are putting more effort into modifying their own loans than those of investors.

Bank of America has agreed to participate in Keep Your Home California's principal reduction program, the California Housing Finance Agency announced Wednesday. Principal write-downs offered under the state-run program are part of a $2 billion, federally funded effort to help hard-hit families remain in their homes and ease the California foreclosure crisis. Bank of America has been engaged in a pilot of the principal reduction program since February, and is now moving into full participation.

The Homeownership Preservation Foundation (HPF), an independent nonprofit dedicated to helping distressed homeowners avoid foreclosure, unveiled its new, redesigned website Wednesday. HPF operates the nationwide Homeowner's HOPE Hotline. Its new site now mirrors the assistance already available via phone, including step-by-step details on the foreclosure process, an overview of alternative lender solutions, and details on government mortgage relief programs.

Median prices for REO and short sale transactions continue to decline. A new report from CoreLogic shows distressed home prices at the national level have fallen 10 percent since 2009. The company notes, however, that new foreclosure auction filings have dropped significantly since last October, and the industry's shadow inventory has been trimmed. With these two distressed sale drivers narrowing, CoreLogic says such transactions will likely begin to decline late in 2011 and into 2012.

Wells Fargo & Company has appointed Mike Heid president of Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. Heid previously served as co-president of the mortgage company, along with Cara Heiden, who is retiring from her position within the next few months. Wells Fargo Home Mortgage will be housed as part of the company's new consumer lending group, which will be led by Avid Modjtabai.

Ocwen Financial Corporation has enacted a unique loan modification program designed to help underwater homeowners and investors without rewarding loan delinquency. The company's Shared Appreciation Modification (SAM) reduces a delinquent borrower's principal to 95 percent of the home's current market value but requires the homeowner to later share 25 percent of the home's appreciation with the investor when the home is eventually sold or refinanced.

Fannie Mae has issued a notice to servicers alerting them of a change in the effective date for new delinquency management and default prevention standards. According to the bulletin, Fannie is pushing the date by which servicers must implement the new requirements out by a month to October 1, 2011. The revised rules are part of the directive issued by the company's regulator in late April to bring both Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's procedures for handling past-due mortgages in line with one another.

BlackBox Logic, LLC recently entered into agreements with several prominent academic institutions and faculty members to provide researchers with data on U.S. and international residential real estate and capital markets. In addition, BlackBox recently expanded to offer data covering residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) in the United Kingdom, with plans to expand that service to other European countries.