News

As part of a coordinated plan to help as many homeowners as possible prevent foreclosure and stay in their homes, HOPE NOW, the industry-created alliance of mortgage servicers, investors, counselors, and other mortgage market participants, recently announced that it has expanded the HOPE LoanPort through its housing counselor partners in 25 states and more than 100 cities.

Existing-home sales fell 7.2 percent from December to January but were still above year-ago levels, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported Friday. NAR's chief economist, Lawrence Yun said the monthly decline was discouraging and raises concern about the strength of a recovery. NAR's analysis shows there are currently 3.27 million existing homes available for sale. At the current sales pace, this represents a 7.8-month supply of backlogged homes.

Moody's Investors Service projects the national rate of underwater homeowners could reach 50 percent by early 2011. Florida's All Statewide Property Corporation says it has found a solution to this dilemma by forming satellite limited partnerships to by bulk mortgages from lenders and reducing principal balances to current market values.

The FDIC has requested comments from the industry on a new regulation that would limit safe harbor protections for assets, including mortgages, which have been securitized by failed banks. FDIC officials say the rule would return some confidence to the tenuous secondary market, but industry trade groups argue that it could have a counter effect of creating ""substantial uncertainty"" for investors and stifle an important financing channel.

According to a recent article written by Andrew Jakabovics, an associate director for housing and economics at the Center for American Progress, the Federal Housing Finance Administration's (FHFA) house price index (HPI) is a reminder that local markets behave differently over time, which strongly affects both lenders' and insurers' profitability, or lack thereof.

In an announcement Friday, Freddie Mac said effective September 1, 2010, it will no longer buy or securitize interest-only mortgages, including initial interest fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages. The GSE reported earlier in the week that interest-only and Alt-A loans collectively accounted for 44 percent of its credit losses in 2009.

President Obama and his administration are floating an idea to prohibit lenders from foreclosing on a home unless the borrower has been considered for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). The proposal would also halt any foreclosures already in process once a borrower has been accepted into the trial phase of the program. A Treasury spokesperson confirmed that a foreclosure ban is under consideration, but stressed that it is one of many ideas on the table and has not been approved yet.

In an effort to improve its property search and map display, national real estate brokerage Zip Realty, Inc. has partnered with Maponics, LLC, a provider of neighborhood boundary data. ZipRealty, says the alliance will give prospective homebuyers better search results and local mapping data.

U.S. house prices declined modestly in the fourth quarter of 2009, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) seasonally-adjusted purchase-only house price index (HPI), which was calculated using home sales price information from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-acquired mortgages.

Santa, Ana California-based First American Document Solutions, a member of the First American Corporation and a single point of access to a large land records database, recently announced that it has enhanced its online title policy and document retrieval capabilities.