Foreclosure

Vermont Attorney General William H. Sorrell announced Wednesday that Countrywide Financial Corporation, now a part of Bank of America, has entered into a settlement with his office to resolve claims concerning Countrywide's origination of home loans in past years. The agreement calls for Countrywide to pay $100,000, which will be disbursed to borrowers in the state whose Countrywide loans were foreclosed upon and used for general foreclosure prevention efforts.

Freddie Mac is riding the wave of the homebuyer tax credit, hoping it will be incentive enough to entice deal-seekers to snatch up foreclosed properties it has repossessed in the hard-hit Las Vegas and Southern California markets and put a dent in the GSE's swollen inventory of REO properties. Freddie officials announced Thursday that they plan to auction off hundreds of HomeSteps REO properties to individual homebuyers in these areas during the last week of April - just ahead of the contract deadline for the federal tax credit.

New data from HOPE NOW shows that servicers completed more than 95,000 loan modifications through their own proprietary programs in February. That's almost double the 52,000 modifications finalized under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) during the same month. The report also showed declines in the number of 60-day delinquencies and foreclosure starts and sales.

The government recently ramped up its efforts to help at-risk borrowers, but according to a recent opinion poll by Destin, Florida-based Housing Predictor, that's not what the majority of people want. Despite the impact it would have on the U.S. economy, 78 percent of those polled said they want the government to let home foreclosures run their course instead of making efforts to stop the crisis.

Countdown To Buy, a next generation online real estate marketplace, announced Tuesday that it successfully generated accepted offers on foreclosed properties in 30 days or less. The properties were located in Dallas and were listed on the company's Web site on March 5, 2010. And before the month's end, offers have already been accepted.

Florida has been aptly dubbed one of the nation's foreclosure hotspots, and its courts have a wall of foreclosure cases to back up that claim. The backlog has gotten so bad, that it's pushed the Florida State Courts Administration to ask legislators for $9.6 million to bring in additional case managers and judges to help clear the still-growing glut of case files. The state's court administrators estimate that there are currently 500,000 pending foreclosure cases. Local judges say ""the numbers are just overwhelming.""

In an announcement Tuesday, Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) said foreclosure sales for its lending and banking clients soared this past week in nationwide live and online auctions, which generated $47.4 million in sales on 625 foreclosed residential properties, commercial properties, and notes.

Various HOPE NOW servicers, including Bank of America, Chase, Citi, GMAC, Suntrust, Wells Fargo, and others, assisted more than 1,300 troubled borrowers during three homeownership preservation events held across the Pacific Northwest last week. According to HOPE NOW, 532 families attended the first of the three events, which was held in Portland, Oregon on March 23. And the two-day event in Bellevue, Washington on March 25 and March 26 saw an additional 796 homeowners.

The delinquent unpaid balance for commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) increased to $47.82 billion in February, according to investment rating agency Realpoint, LLC. The overall delinquent unpaid balance was up almost 300 percent from February 2009, when only $11.98 billion was reported. Last month's numbers represent a delinquency ratio of 6 percent, and Realpoint says it expects the growth trend to continue, potentially reaching 12 percent by year-end.

Marshall & Ilsley Corporation (M&I), a diversified financial services corporation headquartered in Milwaukee, announced Monday that it has extended its foreclosure moratorium an additional 90 days - through June 30, 2010. The moratorium is on all owner-occupied residential loans for customers who agree to work in good faith to reach a successful repayment agreement, and it applies to applicable loans in all M&I markets.