Foreclosure

Hotel asset managers are emerging as the new breed of experienced hotel receivers, according to Capital Hotel Management (CHM), a hotel asset management and investment advisory firm based in Beverly, Massachusetts. As the lending community looks for qualified receivers, the company said it expects to see an exponential leap in demand for hotel asset management services.

Top officials from across the country warned policymakers in Washington this week that efforts to stem the housing crisis are falling short. According to a group of state banking regulators and attorneys general, six out of 10 seriously delinquent borrowers are not involved in loss mitigation efforts. Perhaps the most divisive proposal put forth by the group is that government programs should make principal reductions a priority in areas where home prices have plummeted.

In an effort to prepare for the mortgage industry's high volume of foreclosures that are expected to occur throughout 2010, Lenders Asset Management Corporation (LAMCO), a full-service default asset management company based in Littleton, Colorado, announced the development of its REO Services Scalability Initiative.

RealtyBid.com, an online home auction company, says it has hit the ground running in 2010 by offering close to 1,000 REO properties to investors and homebuyers across the country during the month of January. As part of this effort, hundreds of properties have been added to the company's auction Web site in the past week.

In an announcement Thursday, The Alter Group, a corporate real estate developer based in Chicago, said it has formed Alter Asset Recovery, which will provide expedited solutions for lenders and special servicers holding distressed properties. The formation of this new affiliate comes at a time when distressed commercial real estate assets are potentially the largest challenge facing banks and other lenders.

Although short sales are likely to increase in 2010, the jump in these transactions is unlikely to have any real impact on the housing market, according to a new study by Housing Predictor. While more at-risk homeowners are turning to short sales as an alternative to foreclosure, Housing Predictor says the small number of short sales that are actually approved by banks represent less than 1 percent of all homes facing foreclosure.

As foreclosures continue to plague homeowners across the nation, foreclosure auctions are becoming an increasingly popular option to sell these properties. Due to the increased demand for these auctions, Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC), a real estate auction company based in Irvine, California, says sales are better than ever.

In order to inform congressional decision-making representatives about efforts to address problems in the mortgage markets, the growing problem of poor loan performance and negative home equity in the nonprime mortgage market was addressed in a recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

Few borrowers are asking lenders for adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) these days, what with all the bad publicity paid to ARM resets in the face of soaring foreclosures and borrowing costs for fixed mortgages now sitting at record lows. An annual report on the ARM market published by Freddie Mac Tuesday shows adjustable-rate mortgages accounted for just 3 percent of all conventional home purchase loans in 2009. That's the smallest piece of the pie for ARMs since at least 1982. At that time, they made up 62 percent of all new mortgages.

Bank of America expects to release about 6,000 foreclosed properties into the Nevada housing market in 2010, about 500 a month, according to a local Las Vegas newspaper. The pent-up supply is part of that looming shadow inventory - a stock of distressed properties that have yet to hit the market because of banks' voluntary foreclosure moratoriums prior to the administration's Making Home Affordable program, complex modification evaluations, and lengthy short sale negotiations.