Loss Mitigation

At a Long Island Housing Partnership event Monday, New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced the launch of the Homeowner Protection Program, a commitment of $60 million over three years to fund housing counseling and legal services for the state's homeowners.

Wells Fargo recently announced that it will accept refinance applications for homeowners with FHA mortgages only if their loans are serviced in-house by the mortgage lender. Vickee Adams, a spokesperson for Wells, said in an e-mailed statement that the lender currently services more than 500,000 customers with FHA home loans that could qualify to save money by refinancing under changes at the agency. The lender will start accepting only refinance applications for in-house loans on Tuesday.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed nearly 2.3 million foreclosure prevention actions by from the start of their conservatorship to the end of March 2012, according to FHFA'ss Foreclosure Prevention Report for first-quarter 2012. The report, released Friday, showed that over 1.9 million of the foreclosure prevention actions undertaken by the GSEs have helped borrowers keep their homes. Moreover, half of borrowers who received loan modifications in Q1 2012 had their monthly payments reduced by more than 30 percent, with one third of those including principal forbearance.

Delinquent borrowers who responded to Fannie Mae's National Housing Survey for the first quarter of 2012 expressed more negative viewpoints toward homeownership and paying their mortgage compared to underwater borrowers and those who have seen their home values decline. The data was collected to learn more about the attitudes of the delinquent borrower population that is oftentimes difficult to reach.

Green River Capital (GRC) announced Monday that it entered into an agreement with Phoenix-based Realty Pilot in order to enhance the platform used by GRC's valuation unit.

As of April 2012, 1.5 million homes are in shadow inventory, which is a 14.8 percent decrease from last year in April when the number of homes hiding in the shadows was 1.8 million, CoreLogic reported Thursday. The current level of shadow inventory represents a supply of four months compared to a supply of 6 months a year ago. CoreLogic counts shadow inventory, also known as pending supply, by calculating the number of distressed properties that are seriously delinquent, in foreclosure, and held as real estate owned (REO) by servicers, but not currently listed on multiple listing services.

After seeing months of consistent decreases, May turned out to be a busy month for foreclosure activity. Foreclosure filings, which include default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions, were up 9 percent in May from the previous month of April, but still down 4 percent from a year ago, according to RealtyTrac's U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for May 2012. Foreclosure filings were reported on 205,990 properties in May after two consecutive months below 200,000, but activity levels were still down on a yearly basis for 20 consecutive months now. In April, foreclosure filings totaled 188,780.

Williston Financial Group (WFG),the parent company of WFG Lender Services and WFG National Title Insurance Company, announced Monday the appointment of Donald O'Neill as EVP of institutional services.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have and will continue to realize credit losses due to mortgages originated years before the conservatorship when the GSEs were deemed critical supervisory concerns, FHFA stated in its annual Report to Congress. In 2011, Fannie and Freddie borrowed $33.6 billion from Treasury, an increase from the year before when $28 billion was drawn. Of the $33.6 billion, $16.1 billion was used to fund dividend payments back to Treasury. The losses leading to the $17.5 billion drawn from Treasury were due to business decisions made by the GSEs in the pre-conservatorship days. Overall, the GSEs have drawn $187.5 billion from Treasury as of the end of 2011.

The North Carolina Association of Realtors (NCAR) announced June 6 that the organization has allocated a total of $50,000 to counseling agencies in the state to help homeowners in danger of foreclosure. Through a grant from the National Association of Realtors, NCAR awarded five $10,000 fellowships to counseling agencies in Boone, Greensboro, Kannapolis, Fayetteville, and Wilmington.