News

In an effort to revolutionize the way investors buy REO property, Austin, Texas-based Econohomes, a nationwide direct seller of residential REO properties, has launched a new Web site. Built on a robust technology platform, Econohomes' Web site combines superior information on its extensive nationwide real estate inventory with the ability for investors to bundle and purchase groups of REO properties at significant discounts.

More than 12,700 Bank of America customers now have a permanent loan modification under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), according to the bank's monthly report to the Department of the Treasury. Up from 3,200 completed modifications reported in December, Bank of America quadrupled its number of permanent HAMP modifications in just 30 days.

Sixteen months after Countrywide Financial settled one of the biggest predatory lending lawsuits in the nation's history, restitution is coming for distressed homeowners in Florida. More than 2,700 Countrywide borrowers in the Sunshine State are being sent foreclosure relief payments from the lender this week, totaling $16.9 million. Florida's Attorney General said the checks will make a ""significant difference"" for struggling families who are trying to save their homes.

As home price reductions continue to level off, the housing market is beginning to show signs of stability, according to a recent report by San Francisco-based Trulia, Inc., a real estate search engine. Findings of the report showed that as of February 1, 2010, 21 percent of homes currently on the market in the United States experienced at least one price cut.

The percentage of borrowers at least 60 days past due on their mortgage increased for the 12th straight quarter, hitting 6.89 percent by the end of 2009, according to new data released by TransUnion Tuesday. This precursor to foreclosure increased 10.24 percent from the previous quarter, and compared to the year-ago delinquency rate of 4.58 percent, past due mortgages are up a staggering 50 percent, TransUnion said.

To meet the ever-increasing need for successful analysis and evaluation of loss mitigation efforts, loan servicers and lenders are embracing online technology. As a result, Denver-based Mortgage Cadence, Inc., a provider of enterprise lending solutions for the financial services industry, has entered into the mortgage servicing technology arena with the introduction of the Loss Mitigation Gateway to provide online initiation, management, and execution of the loss mitigation process.

The PMI Group Inc. said Tuesday that it lost $228.2 million, or $2.76 per share, in the fourth quarter of last year, even though it posted gains in revenue. The default rate on mortgages the company insures hit 21.40 percent at the end of last year. The company also announced that it has received approval from the state of Arizona and from Fannie Mae for its subsidiaries to continue writing mortgage insurance even if PMI falls below mandated capital requirements.

Thirty-two banks have folded in Georgia since August 2008, making it the most failure-prone state of the latest recession. The blame for most of Georgia's institutional collapses can be placed squarely on the region's deteriorating real estate market. But lawmakers there are changing the rules to allow banks to exceed current lending caps if a borrower hasn't defaulted on their payments, making it easier for them to renew large commercial real estate loans.

Maponics, a Vermont-based provider of location-based data and information, announced Tuesday that it has been chosen by the Lender Processing Services (LPS) Real Estate Group to provide the boundary data required to enable local searching of its property databases.

Federal Reserve Board Governor Daniel Tarullo is urging lawmakers to craft reform legislation that would give regulators the authority to collect a broader range of data from lenders, including details of their loans and securities. It's insight the governor says is needed to accurately assess large financial firms' risk and ward off another crisis where the collapse of any one institution sends the system into a tailspin - as was the case when Lehman Brothers went under in 2008.