News

Real Estate Disposition, LLC (REDC) announced Thursday that it will auction more than 370 Northern and Southern California bank-owned foreclosures, including 76 occupied properties, over the next two weeks. The Northern California homes will be auctioned online from June 8 through June 12, and the Southern California homes will be auctioned both live and online on June 19 and June 20.

Frances Martinez Myers, a real estate and relocation industry veteran, was recently appointed as president of Employee Transfer Corporation, a Philadelphia-based company that facilitates the moves of corporate employees throughout the world and provides foreclosure asset management services, doing business as (dba) ETCREO.

The California Senate has approved a new foreclosure bill and sent it to the Assembly for review. It lays out two major provisions intended to deter lax behavior on the part of servicers and prevent avoidable foreclosures in the state. The legislation would provide a means of recourse to homeowners whose homes were lost to foreclosure due to serious servicer errors, and it would prohibit servicers from starting the foreclosure process until a homeowner has received a final decision on their modification.

Foreclosed property held by U.S. banks increased 12.5 percent to $41.5 billion during the first quarter of this year, according to a recent analysis by SNL Financial, a financial market research firm out of Charlottesville, Virginia. The company says banks' aggregate foreclosed inventory is up from $36.9 billion at year-end 2009, and $11.7 billion in the first quarter of 2008. While still elevated, single-family homes as a percentage of total real estate being repossessed by lenders has dropped significantly over the last few months.

After raising $1.75 billion of investment capital, Cornerstone Real Estate Advisers LLC, a Hartford, Connecticut-based real estate investment manager, has closed the Cornerstone Core Mortgage Fund I LP, which invests in low-leverage core mortgages secured by properties with quality ownership and sustainable cash flows.

Zone Data Systems, with 233 member appraisal companies in 25 states that employ more than 500 appraisers, recently announced that it has joined forces with Bradford Technologies, Inc., in order to provide clients with the new Collateral Valuation Report (CVR). The company says the CVR is an innovative, Uniform Standards of Professional Appraisal Practice-compliant appraisal product that incorporates regression analysis performed by the appraiser to support the value conclusion.

Grubb & Ellis Company, a commercial real estate services and investment firm based in Santa Ana, California, recently announced that it has launched a national appraisal and valuation business through a reinvigoration of its Landauer brand. The company, Grubb & Ellis Landauer Appraisal & Valuation, is focused on having a presence in every key market by the end of year and will be run by industry veterans, Douglas Haney and Eduardo Alegre.

In an effort to help lenders identify undisclosed debt during the underwriting process and stay in compliance with Fannie Mae's updated policy regarding borrower liabilities, Equifax Inc. has launched a new mortgage solution--Undisclosed Debt Monitoring. According to the company, this new tool is the mortgage industry's first platform to monitor for and notify financial institutions of new accounts and borrower activity initiated during the ""quiet period,"" which spans from the mortgage application date to the loan closing date - a historical blind spot for lenders.

The nation's unemployment rate dropped from 9.9 percent to 9.7 percent in May, as the economy added 431,000 jobs last month, the Labor Department reported Friday. The job market growth, though, is being called ""disappointing"" since nearly all of the new positions were temporary workers hired by the U.S. Census. The private sector counted only 41,000 new jobs in May. The previous month, newly released job data shows that residential mortgage companies cut 5,500 full-time workers from their payrolls.

The state of New Jersey is trying a new and innovative approach to help streamline the foreclosure process and clear its backlog of cases. The state's court system is testing an electronic filing system for foreclosure actions. The New Jersey-based law firm of Parker McCay is one of 10 firms selected to participate in the pilot, which launches July 1st.