News

The Federal Housing Finance Agency released a revised Strategic Plan for the years 2013 through 2017 Tuesday. The plan is a modified version of the plan FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco presented to congress in February. The plan details four major goals for the FHFA over the next few years. The first goal is to ensure ""safe and sound housing government-sponsored enterprises.""

The U.S. government is suing Wells Fargo over what officials allege constitutes more than 10 years of misconduct as a direct endorsement lender for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The civil fraud suit was filed in federal court Tuesday and alleges Wells Fargo falsely certified the credit and underwriting quality of FHA loans it originated. According to the complaint, thousands of Wells Fargo's FHA-insured mortgages defaulted as a result of deficient underwriting, causing the government agency to lose hundreds of millions of dollars.

After rounding out its fourth military homeowner event, HOPE NOW announced more events are to come. In September, HOPE NOW hosted an event in Fort Bragg, North Carolina, which attracted 60 attendees, and another event at joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington, where 142 military families were able to receive assistance.

MortgageKeeper Referral Services announced Tuesday that it will begin working with Family Credit Management to help its counselors connect consumers to vetted community services via MortgageKeeper's MKDesktop product. Family Credit Management is a nonprofit consumer credit and housing counseling agency licensed in over 20 states. It's counselors will now have Web-based access to MortgageKeeper's nationwide database of more than 6,500 nonprofit and government services.

Wells Fargo has been ramping up its lobbying activities over the past several years. After spending just $620,000 on lobbying in 2002, a decade later the bank's spending is in the millions, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics. Last year, Wells Fargo spent nearly $8 million on government lobbying. This year, the bank has invested a total of about $3.8 million in lobbying, according to the Center.

Consumer optimism about the housing market and homeownership improved substantially in September, Fannie Mae reported. According to the GSE's September 2012 National Housing Survey, upward trends in home prices and downward trends in mortgage rates throughout the summer reinforced positive attitudes about where the market is headed.

The shadow inventory that previously darkened industry outlook is beginning to fade. In fact, we may soon begin to see the sunlight on the horizon. In July shadow inventory - unlisted homes that are seriously delinquent, in foreclosure, or held as REOs - declined 10.2 percent year-over-year, falling to 2.3 million homes, according to CoreLogic's Shadow Inventory Report released Tuesday. Seriously delinquent homes – those 90 or more days delinquent – are the most common type of home in today's shadow inventory, making up 1 million of the 2.3 million-home total.

In the second quarter of this year, filers submitted 17,476 Mortgage Loan Fraud Suspicious Activity Reports (MLF SARs), marking a 41 percent yearly decrease, according to a report from Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN). Even though reports of MLF activity made a steep drop and continue to fall year-over-year, reports of foreclosure rescue scams have been increasing. If foreclosures rescue SARs continue at the current pace into the remainder of 2012, the yearly total for foreclosure rescue reports will be significantly higher than 2011.

Federal officials jointly announced Tuesday the results of the Distressed Homeowner Initiative, which is the first nationwide effort focusing on fraud schemes that target struggling homeowners. Led by members of the Mortgage Fraud Working Group of the Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, the initiative spanned from October 1, 2011, to September 30, 2012. Federal officials revealed the efforts have led to 530 criminal defendants charged in 285 federal criminal indictments or informations filed throughout the U.S.

Home equity installment balances rose 0.3 percent in August--the first monthly increase since November 2007, according to Equifax. After plummeting 49 percent over the past four years to just $143 billion, the company contends August's uptick could signal ""a possible turning point in mortgage demand."" Equifax says amid signs the contraction in mortgage debt is slowing and delinquencies are trending down, it looks like positive growth may finally be taking hold in the mortgage market.