Loss Mitigation

Distressed properties, including short sales and REOs, accounted for 29 percent of all home sales in the United States in January, according to new data released Thursday by First American CoreLogic. The company says it's the highest level of distressed transactions since April 2009. Among the largest markets, Riverside, California had the highest percentage of distressed sales at 62 percent, followed closely by Las Vegas, with 59 percent, and Sacramento with 58 percent.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines has approved Nationwide Advantage Mortgage Company as a subservicer for certain mortgage products. The subservicing program is available for participating financial institutions that may not want to incur the expense and operational risks associated with servicing these mortgage loans.

USFN, America's Mortgage Banking Attorneys, recently hosted its first Loan Management & Servicing Seminar of 2010. Close to 400 attendees gathered at the Omni Mandalay at Las Colinas hotel in Dallas March 17-19 to participate in the event. The seminar featured more than 20 informative sessions, open roundtable discussions, and timely forums that covered increasingly hot topics in the industry.

The Federal Reserve has gotten a first-hand look at the kind of havoc residential and commercial real estate loans can wreak on a balance sheet in today's market. It can now fully appreciate the woes that lenders and mortgage investors have been facing since the downturn. That's because the Fed's New York bank now finds itself in the very same boat, after two monolithic financial bailouts in 2008 - Bear Stearns and American International Group (AIG) - saddled the federal institution's books with a heap of souring loans.

The National Credit Union Association (NCUA) is planning to securitize more than $50 billion of what the organization has deemed to be ""toxic assets that caused the meltdown."" The NCUA, which serves the same regulatory and depository insurance role for credit unions as the FDIC does for banks, would be following in the fashion of its banking counterpart, turning to the secondary market to quickly dispose of poorly performing loans. The FDIC has successfully completed three such transactions over the past month.

The administration's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program hasn't even been in effect for a full week, and positive feedback is already coming in. Loan Resolution Corporation, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based pre-foreclosure asset manager that acts as a vendor for banks implementing HAFA, said it expects a tremendous surge in short sales to accompany the recent implementation of this new program.

Federal regulators and economist have been warning the industry, the public, and the administration for a good many months now about the devastation a commercial real estate (CRE) meltdown could leave in its wake. On Tuesday, a gentleman personifying both factions of these red-flag-raisers - William Emmons, economist and assistant vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis - spoke to attendees at The Five Star Institute's Commercial Default 360 event in Dallas.

Phoenix-based Sharp Equity has begun offering title insurance for foreclosed homes purchased at trustee auctions in Arizona. The company says it's the first in the state to do so, and touts its approach as removing the last major risk from trustee sales and opening up the foreclosure market to the general public.

The administration's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program is in effect, and players from every corner of the industry are teaming up and working in unison to help ensure the short sale program's success. The Treasury's Laurie Maggiano tells DSNews.com that major servicers are ready, with dedicated staff on hand to handle the influx of short sale requests. And some of the biggest players, like Bank of America, are taking it one step further, partnering with technology firm Equator and RE/MAX agents to hit the ground running.

In an announcement Monday, Irving, Texas-based iServe Servicing, Inc., a residential mortgage special servicer of performing, sub-performing, non-performing, and bank-owned assets, said it has received certification to participate in the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP).