Government

The number of past due home loans guaranteed by Freddie Mac has fallen below the 4 percent threshold. The milestone is a sign that the performance of the GSEs' loan portfolio is improving and loss mitigation efforts are having an impact, considering Freddie endured three long years of delinquency increases until March of this year. The company's latest report shows that the number of single-family mortgages at least three months past due or in foreclosure stood at 3.96 percent at the end of June. That's down from a high of 4.20 percent as recently as February.

The number of U.S. banks to go under this year surpassed the 100-mark over the weekend, as regulators closed the doors on community-based lenders in Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Minnesota, Nevada, Oregon, and South Carolina. The seven closures announced late Friday pushed the 2010 failed-bank tally to 103. The pace of bank collapses this year has intensified as smaller lenders continue to book mounting losses from commercial real estate loans.

Now that the Obama administration can claim victory in passing financial regulatory reform, it's setting its sights on restructuring the housing finance system, namely the GSEs. The White House says it will put forth a formal proposal by early next year, and some say its focus will be a departure from the age-old adage of homeownership as everyone's ""American Dream,"" and shift support for the housing market from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the private sector. One thing is for sure, change is coming for the nation's two largest mortgage companies.

In an announcement Friday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner announced that when Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan leaves office on August 14, John G. Walsh will step in to take over this role. Walsh will assume this new role from his current position as chief of staff and public affairs for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, a title he has held since October 17, 2005.

The strides made by the Federal Housing Administration in lowering delinquency numbers are turning into a long-distance marathon run. The federal mortgage insurer's delinquency rate dropped again in June, marking the fifth straight month of declines. According to FHA's latest operations report, as of June 30, 532,757 of the mortgages it guarantees had spent at least 90 days in a delinquent status, which equates to a seriously delinquent rate of 8.3 percent. That's down from 8.4 percent in May, and 9.4 percent during the first month of this year.

A federal investigation has exposed ties between Fannie Mae executives and Countrywide's controversial ""Friends of Angelo"" VIP loan program. Documents subpoenaed by Rep. Darrell Issa revealed that 27 former employees at the government-sponsored mortgage company received 153 subsidized, low-cost loans through the Countrywide program - a program that Issa says existed to buy friends in critical government and industry positions affecting the company's business interests.

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. (FINRA) has fined Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. $7.5 million for negligently misrepresenting delinquency data in connection with the issuance of subprime securities. The independent securities regulator found that Deutsche Bank misstated and underreported the percentages of mortgages that were delinquent in the prospectus supplements of six subprime residential mortgage backed securities (RMBS) issued in 2006, worth approximately $2.2 billion.

Renters who find themselves indirect victims of foreclosure were not forgotten in the financial reform legislation. The Dodd-Frank bill will extend the Protecting Tenants at Foreclosure Act (PTFA) through the end of 2014. PFTA provides renters whose landlords have lost their properties to foreclosure the right to stay in the home for 90 days after the foreclosure or through the term of their lease. The legislation also includes a provision that requires the HUD secretary to develop a program to refinance troubled multifamily mortgages.

The new financial reform legislation provides an additional $1 billion for HUD's Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) - a nationwide initiative aimed at alleviating the effects of the foreclosure crisis on communities that are riddled with abandoned properties. In some cities, take a drive down any one street and you'll find three or more homes that have been boarded up and in some cases, commandeered by squatters and turned into havens for criminal activity. NSP was launched to address this very issue by allowing local and state government's to take back their cities and eliminate blight.

Included in the Treasury's latest installment of the Home Affordable Modification Program's (HAMP) monthly progress report is a new section detailing the performance of loans permanently modified. The report says the redefault rate for homeowners that have been in permanent modifications for at least six months is 1.7 percent. In commentary published Wednesday, analysts at Barclays Capital took issue with the Treasury's calculations, primarily because trial cancellations are not factored into the equation.