News

The economy continued to expand at a modest to moderate pace from mid-February through late March, the Federal Reserve said Wednesday in its periodic Beige Book, reporting faster and solid growth in Kansas City and Minneapolis but moderate or modest growth in Boston, Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco Cleveland and St. Louis. New York reported economic growth picked up somewhat while Philadelphia and Richmond cited improving business conditions.

Mortgage foreclosure scams have surged 60 percent this year following newly launched federal programs, the Homeownership Preservation Foundation (HPF) announced. ""Regretfully, every new government initiative spawns a slew of foreclosure avoidance scams, often from the same cast of characters doing business under various names to avoid easy detection and identification,"" said Colleen Hernandez, CEO of HPF. Hernandez added that most of these scams involve individuals purporting to offer foreclosure prevention assistance that trained HPF counselors provide at no cost.

MortgageKeeper Referral Services released its Homeowner Needs Status Report for the 2012 first quarter ending March 31. The report revealed that homeowners received 217,000 referrals, or requests for local assistance, from MortgageKeeper – more than twice the level of referrals for the same period last year.

The FDIC is going to do something it has never done before organize an online real estate auction. The online auction will be managed by Micoley Auctions and the properties auctioned will be concentrated in the Midwest region, with assets in Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services announced last week that Abdias Lira, a principal software architect with the company's residential lending business, has been elected to the Mortgage Bankers Association's MISMO Residential Governance Committee. Lira has been involved with MISMO since 2001 and has served as co-chair of its e-Mortgage Workgroup since 2008.

Nineteen members of California's congressional delegation want to keep Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's ""for rent"" signs outside their state's borders. Led by Congressman Gary Miller, the group sent a letter to Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, petitioning him to exclude the 600 homes in California slated for the pilot program of the REO Initiative, which aims to sell off homes repossessed by the GSEs and FHA to institutional investors who will turn the properties into rental homes.

While arguments continue to be made that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should apply principal reductions to keep underwater borrowers from going into foreclosure, Edward DeMarco, FHFA acting director, still has plenty of ammo to defend his highly criticized stance. During a speech at the Brookings Institution Tuesday, DeMarco, despite revealing figures that showed the GSEs could potentially save $1.7 billion through the application of principal reduction, still cited reasons to be wary of the proposed foreclosure prevention solution.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is looking to propose mortgage servicing rules to keep borrowers from costly surprises and prevent servicers from giving customers the runaround. Lack of transparency and lack of accountability are the two issues motivating the new rules, and to create more transparency, the CFPB is proposing clear monthly mortgage statements, a warning before interest rates adjust, options to avoid force-placed insurance, and early information to keep customers out of foreclosure.

Christy L. Romero was sworn in as Special Inspector General of SIGTARP Monday. Romero was nominated by President Barack Obama on February 1, 2012 and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on March 29.

Bank of America is making changes to its short sale procedures and introducing an improved task flow within the short sale technology module from Equator, BofA's short sale management platform of choice. The goal: to reduce the timeframe for a short sale decision to less than three weeks. Starting Saturday, April 14, real estate professionals working with BofA will be required to submit five documents for short sales initiated with an offer, and they will be able to complete tasks such as document collection, valuations, and underwriting at the same time.