Foreclosure

A survey by Trulia and RealtyTrac shows that only 1 percent of homeowners with a mortgage say walking away would be their first choice if they were unable to make their payments, while 59 percent would not consider a strategic default no matter how much their mortgage was underwater. With walking away off the table for most homeowners, the survey found that only 5 percent of borrowers would opt for a short sale as their first choice if facing foreclosure, while 69 percent would pursue a loan modification to save their home.

Sending letters of notification to homeowners throughout the delinquency life cycle is a requirement to meet insurer, investor, and state guidelines. Failure to send mail to a valid address can invalidate a foreclosure action and result in penalties. Technology provider IndiSoft has added U.S. Postal Service address verification to its RxOffice platform to help its clients address this issue.

Real Estate Disposition, LLC (REDC), a national real estate auction firm headquartered in Irvine, California, announced the re-launch of its Auction.com Web site on Wednesday. The company says it has increased site content tenfold to support more than 500,000 unique monthly visitors.

National home prices increased by 1.7 percent in March 2010 compared to a year ago, according to CoreLogic. It marked the second straight month that CoreLogic has recorded annual gains in home prices, breaking a depreciation streak of more than three years. But the company warns that going into the summer months, price growth will quickly fade, and because of the inventory of distressed properties, CoreLogic expects home prices nationally to fall another 5 percent over the next 12 months.

Further expanding its existing range of default management services, the business outsourcing firm Zenta announced Wednesday that it has successfully implemented an end-to-end short sale program that is fully compliant with the administration's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program. According to the company, this workflow-based process management system is customized to adhere to the latest HAFA guidelines and timetables.

The percentage of home loans making their way through the foreclosure process jumped to a new record high during the first quarter of 2010, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday. Despite the industry's, and the government's, all-out attack on the nation's foreclosure problem, MBA's regular quarterly study showed that 4.63 percent of outstanding mortgages were in foreclosure at the end of March. Another 10.06 percent were past due.

HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan is asking Congress to release additional funds to help communities combat the ongoing effects of the housing crisis and home foreclosures. He says the Obama administration is committed to working with lawmakers to secure a third round of funding for HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP). The federal agency has disbursed $6 billion through NSP to help local governments and non-profit developers buy and rehabilitate or demolish vacant and foreclosed homes in their communities.

The time it's taking for a property to move from the first stage of the foreclosure process to auction has shrunk in Massachusetts, according to a new study released Tuesday by the Warren Group. The Boston-based research firm found that it is now taking an average of about 4.6 months for a property to hit the auction block in the Bay State, compared to eight months in the early part of 2008.

Consumer default data released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's and Experian show a sharp drop in the number of overdue first and second mortgages. Based on Experian's consumer credit database of approximately $11 trillion in outstanding loans sourced from 11,500 lenders, the companies' April default index for first mortgages was down 31 percent from a year ago, while defaults on second mortgages fell 45 percent over the past 12 months.

As of April 30, Wells Fargo had completed 36,094 permanent modifications under the administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). According to Treasury, Wells Fargo ranks third for the number of permanent modifications completed to date, trailing behind Bank of America, with 56,398 permanent modifications, and JP Morgan Chase, with 39,507.