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After more than a year of drafts, rewrites, and debate, the U.S. Senate voted 60 to 39 on Thursday afternoon to approve sweeping new legislation to overhaul the nation's financial regulatory system. It took senators two weeks to round up enough votes for passage since the House approved the bill on July 1. President Obama now just needs to ink his name to the 2,300-plus pages of new rules and regulatory structures, which address a broad scope of financial market issues, from mortgage lending to ""too big to fail"" institutions.

Equator said Thursday that 300,000 short sales have been initiated on its platform since the short sale automation solution was launched in November 2009. Just over a month ago, the company hit the 200,000 mark, illustrating just how quickly short sale transactions are gaining momentum. Since January, Equator says its technology platform has processed twice the amount of short sales as REOs. Its users completed an average of 196,822 short sale transactions per day during the first two months of the second quarter of 2010.

RealtyTrac released its Midyear 2010 Foreclosure Report Thursday, which shows that 1,654,634 U.S. properties received a foreclosure filing during the first half of this year. That figure means that one in every 78 homes received at least one filing between January and June. RealtyTrac says at this pace, we're on track to exceed 3 million properties with foreclosure filings by the end of the year, and more than 1 million bank repossessions. In the second quarter alone, bank repos hit a new record high.

The combination of a down economy and high levels of housing inventory has put sellers at a disadvantage as home prices have continued to drop throughout the summer. According to a report released Wednesday by Trulia, 24 percent of listings on the market as of July 1, 2010 experienced at least one price reduction, a 9 percent increase from the previous month. The total dollar amount slashed came in at $27.3 billion, and the average discount for price-reduced homes continued to hold steady at 10 percent off of the original listing price.

A joint venture between the real estate investment firms Colony Capital, headquartered in Santa Monica, California, and the Cogsville Group of New York City placed the winning bid on a portfolio of $1.85 billion in distressed commercial real estate (CRE) loans from the FDIC. The portfolio includes 1,660 commercial mortgages, of which approximately 50 percent are already delinquent. All of the loans were seized by the FDIC from 22 banks that failed over the past two years.

Mortgage fraud risk has declined by 25 percent since it peaked in the third quarter of 2007, according to CoreLogic. But further analysis by the company reveals that despite the falloff, one in 200 home loans still contain misrepresentations that could result in default. CoreLogic concludes that overall fraud risk within the industry appears to have leveled off in 2009. However, one area of increasing concern is short sales, which grew in volume by more than 300 percent over the previous two years.

Delinquency rates for residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) were mixed in June. According to Fitch Ratings, U.S. prime RMBS serious delinquencies rose for the 37th consecutive month. But during the same period, Alt-A RMBS delinquencies declined for the third consecutive month, and subprime late-pays fell for the fourth straight month.

Due to a drop in both purchase and refinance activity, mortgage loan application volume fell 2.9 percent for the week ending July 9, 2010, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday. According to MBA's Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey, the purchase index dipped 3.1 percent from previous week, hitting the lowest level observed in the survey since December 1996. In addition, MBA said the refiannce index fell 2.9 percent from one week to the next.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services announced this week that the company's Fair Lending Wiz software now includes an Ethnicity Proxy functionality to help improve the quality of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) loan data to detect potential problems that may contribute to discriminatory loans. The Department of Justice is currently investigating 18 lenders for potential fair lending violations as the housing crisis has made predatory lending an area of focus.

After a good beginning in 2010, stress returned to the financial markets in the second quarter. But the credit rating agency DBRS says rising market stress is more manageable this time around for U.S. banks. Banks have bolstered their liquidity through debt issuance, reduced balance sheets, are less reliant on short-term market funding, and they've significantly increased cash holdings. But even with all these positives, DBRS says banks are still finding it difficult to grow loans because they remain cautious about extending credit and loan demand is muted.