News

The Arizona Department of Housing (ADOH) announced last week that it has received $683,060 to support the continuation of the state’s foreclosure prevention counseling efforts. The much-needed boost will enable an existing network of 13 community-based organizations across Arizona to provide continued assistance to homeowners in danger of foreclosure, ADOH said in a press statement.

San Francisco-based Roost Inc. – a national real estate property search engine – announced yesterday that it has partnered with First American CoreLogic – a First American Corporation company and a provider of advanced property and ownership information, analytics and services – to add foreclosure listings from First American CoreLogic to Roost.

Fannie Mae announced a series of actions this week designed to help borrowers and loan servicers get an early jump on potential mortgage problems and prevent unnecessary home foreclosures among the more than 18 million single-family loans owned or guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprise (GSE).

Based on middle-ground assumptions, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) forecasts existing-home sales to total 4.96 million this year, and then increase to 5.19 million in 2009 and 5.55 million in 2010.

New data shows that more than half of the loans modified in the first quarter of 2008 became delinquent again within six months, Comptroller of the Currency John C. Dugan said at a national housing conference in Washington yesterday.

Birmingham, Alabama-based Regions Financial Corporation says that even in today’s challenging economy and housing market, its proactive home retention strategy has allowed the company to maintain a foreclosure rate of less than one percent for residential first mortgages.

New Jersey Governor Jon S. Corzine is calling for federal assistance to homeowners struggling to make their mortgage payments and facing the threat of foreclosure. Corzine said that a federal program needs to be implemented to address the housing crisis or the government risks driving the nation even deeper into recession.

IHS Global Insight, a company providing economic and financial analysis and forecasting, released a third-quarter update to its U.S. housing valuation analysis, House Prices in America:http://www.globalinsight.

TransUnion, a global credit and information management company, released the results of its analysis of trends in the mortgage industry for the third quarter of 2008 on Monday. According to the company, mortgage loan delinquency (ratio of borrowers 60 or more days past due) increased for the seventh straight quarter, hitting a national average high of 3.

Last week, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved its final rules for credit rating agency reform. The commission is calling for changes to the practices of credit ratings agencies because it says agencies’ ratings of securities that were backed by subprime mortgage loans contributed to the recent turmoil in the credit markets.