News

Following a surge in sales from September through November, existing-home sales fell 16.7 percent in December 2009, according to the latest report from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). The longer-term results, though, demonstrated the ongoing momentum in sales activity throughout the year. For all of 2009, there were 5,156,000 completed sales of previously owned homes, a 4.9 percent jump from the annual sales recorded in 2008. This is the first annual sales gain since 2005, NAR said.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank says he will be recommending Congress close the doors on the government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and rebuild the nation's housing finance system from ground zero. According to Frank, who has long been one of the GSEs' biggest proponents on Capitol Hill, the two firms cannot continue in their current form and his committee plans to propose killing off the enterprises completely rather than taking a ""piecemeal"" approach to their restructuring.

The number of regional bank closures has already begun to pick up speed. Regulators have shuttered five more community-based financial institutions - in Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, Oregon, and Washington. The FDIC is making moves that indicate it expects another year of elevated bank closings. The agency is opening a satellite office in suburban Chicago to help manage receiverships and liquidate assets from failed institutions in the Midwest, similar to offices it has already set up in California and Florida.

After six straight years of double-digit growth, lenders' reports of suspected mortgage fraud remained relatively flat during the first half of 2009, according to a new government report. The Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) said depository institutions reported 32,926 cases of possible mortgage fraud in the first six months of last year - just a 1 percent increase over filings during the same period in 2008.

While the number of initiated foreclosures in Massachusetts increased year-over-year in 2009, the number of completed foreclosures decreased during the same period, according to the latest report from The Warren Group, a Boston-based provider of real estate data in New England.

Although the economy seems to be on the mend, the commercial real estate market is still facing an uphill battle. To provide information and insight into the challenges and opportunities of the commercial real estate industry in the state of Ohio, Smith Realty Partners recently released its annual Smith Report, and the firm conducted the Central Ohio Commercial Real Estate Survey as part of the report.

In an announcement Friday, HUD said homeowners with mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) who are experiencing financial hardship are now eligible for loss mitigation assistance before they fall behind on their mortgage payments. Previously, these homeowners were not eligible for such assistance until after they had missed payments.

First-time homebuyers were the most visible segment of the home purchase market during a turbulent 2009, but new data released this week shows the market presence of this lucrative buying segment began to fall off as last year drew to a close. According to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance Monthly Survey, first-time homebuyers accounted for 42.5 percent of home purchases in December.

Hotel asset managers are emerging as the new breed of experienced hotel receivers, according to Capital Hotel Management (CHM), a hotel asset management and investment advisory firm based in Beverly, Massachusetts. As the lending community looks for qualified receivers, the company said it expects to see an exponential leap in demand for hotel asset management services.

A team of mortgage finance and investment management veterans have announced the official launch of a new company, BlackBox Logic LLC. BlackBoxprovides investors, broker/dealers, and researchers with a database of loan-level collateral underlying non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).