Foreclosure

A recent report found that nationwide, there are approximately 20,000 so-called zombie foreclosures, which are residential properties that have been vacated by the owner but the foreclosure process has not yet been completed. With the owners gone, these abandoned properties are typically not maintained by banks, which potentially breeds blight, attracts violent crime, and brings down values of surrounding properties.

The percentage of delinquent mortgages (loans 30 days or more overdue but not in foreclosure) rose by 1.7 percent over the month in September, reaching 4.87 percent—the highest level since May 2015. This percentage represented about 2.45 million mortgages nationwide, with the monthly increase totaling about 44,000.

At least two cases decided by the United States District Court Southern District of Florida ended with the court siding against the homeowners and for the servicers, giving financial firms a bit more room when interpreting a significant part of RESPA.

The pipeline of U.S. homes in some stage of foreclosure continues to decline with approximately 470,000 homes classified as in some state of distress during the month of August, down 25.2 percent from August of 2014, according to CoreLogic’s latest National Foreclosure report.

San Francisco-based non-profit California Reinvestment Coalition (CRC) filed a lawsuit in federal court against HUD, claiming that the Department improperly denied a fee waiver for a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, according to an announcement from CRC.

Another $186 million in compensation will be awarded to 1,461 service members and their co-borrowers over the unlawful foreclosure of their homes as part of the Department of Justice's settlement with five of the nation's largest mortgage servicers, according to ...

Amid all the good news for housing lately, foreclosure starts were up by 7 percent in August—driven by a rise in the amount of repeat foreclosures, according to the August 2015 Mortgage Monitor released by Black Knight Financial Services on ...

The latest round of funding will go to support the Homeowner Protection Program (HOPP), which is a statewide network of nearly 90 housing counseling and legal services agencies that provide free, high quality assistance to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure and stay in their homes.

The delinquency rate, which includes residential homes that are 30 days or more overdue on mortgage payments but not in foreclosure, tumbled by 18 percent year-over-year in August down to 4.83 percent, the largest over-the-year decline since May 2011, according to Black Knight.

The lawsuit alleges that Wells Fargo refused to refinance these high-cost loans to minorities on the same terms for which they refinanced loans to white borrowers, which resulted in a disproportionate number of foreclosures that subsequently led to abandoned properties and neighborhood blight