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The volume of troubled residential properties has been growing since 2005, but Standard & Poor's says regional inventory levels and trends will determine the detriment of this shadow supply. In the New York City metro area, for example, the company estimates that it will take 103 months for shadow inventory to clear, assuming current liquidation rates. That's nearly 3.5 times the national average of 34 months. By contrast, the Phoenix area has the lowest level of shadow inventory, at 16 months.

Wolters Kluwer Financial Services announced Thursday that its HMDA Wiz software is now available in a software as a service (SaaS) format. As a result, institutions can begin using this solution to collect, report on, analyze, and submit Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data to their regulator almost immediately, the company said.

Due to the recent housing downturn and a lack of funding, the board of director of Neighborhood Housing Services of America (NHSA), a nonprofit secondary market for home loans to low- and moderate-income homebuyers, has authorized the orderly wind down of its affordable housing programs. ""It is unfortunate that circumstances require the ending of this exemplary contribution to the nation's housing needs,"" said Bruce Gottschall, chairman of the board of directors of NHSA.

In a ruling handed down Friday afternoon, Judge Clark Waddoups of the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah sided with Bank of America and overturned a Utah county judge's earlier decision that barred the nation's largest mortgage servicer from carrying out foreclosure sales in the state. Waddoups issued a court order that stated: ""The preliminary injunction of May 22, 2010 issued by the Utah state court is hereby DISSOLVED in its entirety.""

With short sales on the rise, mortgage fraud scams involving these transactions may be following the same trend. In fact, two former Connecticut real estate agents, Sergio Natera and Anna McElaney, recently pled guilty to bank fraud stemming from their involvement in a short sale mortgage fraud scheme. According to court documents, Natera and McElaney worked together to defraud various banks, including Regions Bank, Wells Fargo, and other financial institutions by means of ""materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, and promises.""

With census forms still missing from roughly 48 million households across the country, the U.S. Census Bureau is expanding its outreach efforts. As evidence of this, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) recently reported that brokers and agents have been contacted by Census workers requesting information about the occupants of properties for which they may be providing real estate services. The question now: Are real estate professionals obligated to provide such information?

Economic activity nationwide is showing signs of improvement, according to the Federal Reserve's latest Beige Book, although the pace of growth in most parts of the country was described as ""modest."" The report shows residential real estate activity in many of the 12 Fed districts was buoyed by the April deadline for the homebuyer tax credit, but demand has already begun to pull back in May. Commercial real estate remains weak, the Fed said, and only a few districts noted a small increase in lending.

In its May monthly Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) report to Congress Friday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury announced that TARP repayments to taxpayers have, for the first time, surpassed the total amount of TARP funds outstanding. Treasury's report showed that, through the end of the May, TARP repayments had reached a total of $194 billion, which exceeded the total amount of TARP funds outstanding ($190 billion) by $4 billion.

Chase loan advisors are setting up shop in downtown Atlanta for five days to help struggling borrowers work out a plan to save their homes. The company says 90 Chase loan counselors will be on hand to assist borrowers with loans modifications or short sales.

Over the past year, the mortgage risk analysis firm Clayton Holdings says it has witnessed an overall increase in short sale activity. Because of the growing emphasis on keeping borrowers out of foreclosure, servicers are becoming more inclined to employ alternative loss mitigation strategies. And Clayton says the added benefit to servicers - the one with dollar signs in front of it - is that loss severities for properties sold through short sale are 13 percent lower than loss severities for REO sales.