News

Since the development of the Hardest Hit Fund in February, the state of Oregon has received more than $200 million to help homeowners struggling with their mortgages and to develop foreclosure prevention measures. This Friday the state will open its first foreclosure prevention program. The application for the Mortgage Payment Assistance (MPA) program will be available on the recently launched OHSI Web site from December 10 to January 14, 2011.

The North Carolina Housing Finance Agency's new Foreclosure Prevention Fund is now available statewide through participating HUD-approved counseling agencies. Financed by the Department of Treasury's Hardest Hit Fund, the federal grant money will be used to financially assist homeowners struggling to pay their mortgages due to job loss or other temporary hardships. The agency expects the program to enable 21,000 North Carolina residents to keep their homes.

Americans continue to grapple with uncertainty about the housing market, with 58 percent of U.S. adults expecting recovery to be at least another two years away. Rick Sharga of RealtyTrac and Pete Flint of Trulia are of the same mind as consumers. They peg the housing recovery to begin taking shape between 2013 and 2014. The robo-signing debacle has left most consumers mired in distrust of banks and the government. The industry experts say its effect on REO sales will be minimal, but the impact on consumer confidence could be especially damaging.

The U.S. Treasury Department has priced a public offering of its remaining 2.4 billion shares of Citigroup Inc. common stock at $4.35 per share, bringing the government's ownership of the nation's third largest bank to an end. The deal should yield about $10.5 billion. Treasury expects to reap total proceeds of $57 billion from its $45 billion investment in Citigroup, netting a tidy $12 billion profit for taxpayers for the bank's bailout. The total amount of TARP funds returned to taxpayers now exceeds $261 billion.

Prism Title and Closing Services has expanded its services to include Florida, adding a sixth state to its service area, which also includes Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, Michigan, and Minnesota. The company says the move was prompted by feedback from its bank clients who said that due to the marked increase in REO properties in Florida, their current vendors were having difficulty keeping up with the volume.

The sharp fall in residential property prices in the third quarter means that housing in the U.S. has become even more undervalued. Based on the latest readings of two closely watched industry gauges, the analysts at Capital Economics have concluded that house prices are now 14 to 17 percent undervalued relative to disposable income per capita. A 30-year high in housing affordability hasn't been enough to drive consumer demand, and the research firm says recovery appears to have stalled before it even really began.

A proposal released Monday by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) would require non-bank residential mortgage lenders and originators to establish anti-money-laundering (AML) programs and to file reports with federal officials when suspicious activity is detected. Under current regulations only banks and insured depository institutions are required to file suspicious activity reports (SARs), which have become a critical tool in prosecuting mortgage fraud and related crimes.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has issued a notice to its approved mortgage lenders outlining the loan limitations it's put in place for fiscal year 2011. According to Mortgagee Letter 10-40 issued by the federal mortgage insurer last week, for forward loans, the limits apply to those that are originated and receive credit approval between January 1, 2011 and September 30, 2011. For reverse mortgages, the limits are applicable to all loans that have been assigned an FHA case number within the stated effective dates.

Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, a specialty and component mortgage servicer focusing on highly delinquent loans, recently started using the loss mitigation module from technology developer IndiSoft's RxOffice platform. IndiSoft says Wingspan will use the system to help borrowers avoid foreclosure through either repayment alternatives or short sales to maximize the value of severely delinquent loans for investors.

The recent optimism surrounding delinquencies on commercial real estate loans bundled into investment bonds has been hit with a blast of cold water. The rate of past due loans suddenly jumped in November after a big decline the month before. According to data from Trepp LLC, the percentage of loans held in U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) that were 30 or more days delinquent, in foreclosure, or REO rose 35 basis points in November to 8.93 percent, putting the value of delinquent loans at $60.3 billion.