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The administration's foreclosure prevention plan has come under heavy fire lately, with critics taking aim at everything from the program's slow conversion rates to servicers' lack of response to borrower and counselor requests. To counter all the flying bullets, a Treasury official told lawmakers Thursday that the administration is instituting new consumer protections into the program, including requiring servicers to evaluate all borrowers who've missed at least two payments and prohibiting foreclosure proceedings until it's determined borrowers are HAMP-ineligible.

Citi announced Thursday that it has committed to participate in the administration's second lien modification program (2MP). The New-York based global financial services company is the fourth major servicer to sign on to the program, which was introduced nearly a year ago. Bank of America, Wells Fargo, and Chase have also agreed to participate in the program. Together, these four servicers own $400 billion of the nation's $1 trillion second lien mortgage market.

Although the change in activity was minor, mortgage rates nudged up for the week ending March 25, 2010, Freddie Mac and Bankrate reported Thursday. According to the results of Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.99 percent. And Bankrate said 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 5.11 percent.

Members of the Pennsylvania Association of Realtors (PAR) rallied at the state Capitol Wednesday to voice their opposition to Gov. Ed Rendell's proposal to tax professional real estate services. Rendell has been on a push for several weeks now to drum up support for his new tax plan that would place a levy on goods and services that are currently exempt from the state sales tax, including services provided in the course of real estate transactions.

After a break-neck plunge, commercial real estate prices in the United States are beginning to inch up, slowly. Moody's Investors Service reported this week that values of commercial properties increased for the third month in a row in January, rising 1.0 percent from the company's December reading. Prices have now come back 6.3 percent from their October 2009 low, at which point prices were down 43.7 percent from their peak measured in October 2007.

Seven housing industry veterans will lead HOPE LoanPort, the counselor Web-based tool that streamlines the submission of completed loan modification applications. In an announcement Wednesday, the organization named its CEO and the six individuals that will serve on its board of directors.

Intelenet Global Services and SigniaDocs Inc. have partnered to offer lenders and servicers a scalable eModification solution. The two companies explained that this online, real-time approach compresses today's lengthy and arduous loan modification process to identify and collect required documents into a "Mods in Minutes" solution - technology they say could help to overcome some of the biggest obstacles of the government's Home Affordable Modification Program.

California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. forced two foreclosure rescue firms to close their doors this week and secured a court judgment that prohibits the three principal individuals involved from ever again working in the real estate industry. Brown also recovered more than $1 million in restitution for victims he says were left with ""false hope"" after paying upfront fees for loan modification services that were never delivered.

A new ranking of the mortgage loan servicers in the United States published by a national mortgage industry trade publication put eight of the top 10 largest servicers on the active client list for Palm Harbor, Florida-based Nationwide Title Clearing (NTC), a document and services provider for the residential mortgage industry.

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency's (FHFA) recently-released monthly House Price Index, U.S. house prices fell 0.6 percent from December 2009 to January 2010. And for the12 months ending in January, prices fell 3.3 percent.