News

Bank of America Home Loans announced Wednesday that it has opened a new customer outreach center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in order to better serve financially troubled homeowners in the South Florida area. This is the second customer outreach center the bank has opened this week. As DSNews.com previously reported, Bank of America announced Monday that it opened a new help center in Dedham, Massachusetts.

Included in the Treasury's latest installment of the Home Affordable Modification Program's (HAMP) monthly progress report is a new section detailing the performance of loans permanently modified. The report says the redefault rate for homeowners that have been in permanent modifications for at least six months is 1.7 percent. In commentary published Wednesday, analysts at Barclays Capital took issue with the Treasury's calculations, primarily because trial cancellations are not factored into the equation.

CoreLogic announced Tuesday the availability of WillCap, a new decisioning system that has the ability to predict distressed borrowers' willingness and capacity to make their mortgage payments, thus giving investors and servicers the ability to make more strategic loan modification, short sale, and liquidation decisions at both a loan and portfolio level.

The National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) convenes its 63rd National Convention as economic volatility, high foreclosure rates, and continued unemployment contribute further to the already-precarious conditions of the nation's housing marketplace. Meeting July 29 through August 4, at the Renaissance Worthington Hotel in Fort Worth, Texas, conference attendees are expected to discuss innovative approaches and cross-sector strategies that can be employed to rebuild confidence in the nation's housing market, and at the same time protect financially-distressed homeowners.

Bolstered by a week-to-week drop in interest rates, mortgage loan application volume jumped 7.6 percent for the week ending July 16, 2010, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday. According to MBA's Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey, the uptick in overall mortgage application volume came as both purchase and refinance activity grew from one week to the next. These increases came as rates for both 30-year and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to the lowest levels ever recorded in the survey.

President Obama's very own ""New Deal"" has officially been enacted into law. The president penned his name to the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act Wednesday -- legislation that's been crowned the strongest financial and regulatory reform measure since Franklin Roosevelt's response to the Great Depression. Speaking to reporters outside the Ronald Reagan Building after the signing, President Obama hailed the more than 2,300-page document as ""the strongest consumer financial protections in history.""

DebtX, a full-service loan sale advisor based in Boston, announced Tuesday that it readying plans to sell approximately $200 million of performing commercial real estate loans on behalf of a major U.S. financial institution. The sale, which is set to take place August 18, will include 90 performing loans collateralized primarily by properties in California, New York, Washington, Washington, D.C., and Illinois.

Investment bank Goldman Sachs said Tuesday that its second quarter profit plummeted 82 percent to its lowest level since 2008. The Wall Street fixture explained in its earnings announcement that the disappointing second quarter numbers were the product of a tough trading environment; the company's $550 million dollar settlement with the SEC; and a $600 million payout for the U.K. bank payroll tax.

Merscorp, Inc. (MERS) is making investor information for loans registered on the MERS System available to borrowers at no charge. Through the MERS ServicerID Web site, both servicer and investor information are now displayed. The added investor information is an expansion of the MERS InvestorID program launched in June 2009, which mails a notice to borrowers when the identity of their loan's owner or investor changes.

In response to the influx of foreclosed homes on the market, the real estate auction firm Hudson & Marshall of Texas, Inc., is auctioning nearly 200 bank-owned homes this week in cities throughout Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada. This week's auctions started July 20 and will continue through July 24. The properties up for bid are valued from about $18,000 to more than $450,000, and all come with an insurable title and no back taxes or liens.