News

Community Reinvestment Fund, USA (CRF), a national organization that provides capital to nonprofit community development lenders through its secondary market for loans, recently announced a new foreclosure remediation program for the Twin Cities area of Minnesota.

Pennsylvania Gov. Edward D. Rendell announced on Monday an emergency executive action= intended to provide immediate relief to struggling homeowners in the state. The governor is directing $5 million in state funding to be used for mortgage assistance to ensure that recently unemployed workers can keep their homes while they are retraining and finding new jobs, the governor’s office said in a press statement.

On May 1st, the Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) takes effect, mandating that all new loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac comply with strict rules established to mitigate the risk assumed by the two GSEs.

An auction of foreclosed homes in New York City was picketed by a group of two dozen protesters on Sunday. The auction of more than 375 foreclosed homes was put on by Real Estate Disposition Corp. (REDC), and was only the second event the company has held in the Big Apple.

Despite a surge in actions taken by bank regulators, overall mortgage litigation eased at the end of last year, according to a study prepared by the D.C. law firm of Weiner Brodsky Sidman Kider PC. The firm tracked a total of 202 active cases in the fourth quarter report.

Emeryville, California-based HomeGain, the first website to provide free instant home values, today announced the results of a nationwide survey analyzing homeowners’ and homebuyers’ views on home prices.

According to Michigan-based University Financial Associates (UFA), the risk of default for nonprime mortgages during the first quarter of 2009 is down from Q4 2008. The company’s Default Risk Index for the first three month’s of 2009 fell to 201 from last quarter’s revised index of 209.

Many have argued that Countrywide Financial and its top executives carry a large portion of the blame for the current state of the housing market and the vast amounts of bad loans that have now infiltrated the nation’s financial system.

The national unemployment rate rose to 8.1 percent in February, the highest the stat has reached in a quarter century. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on Friday that 651,000 workers lost their jobs last month.

The U.S. House of Representatives approved legislation on Thursday that will allow bankruptcy judges to reduce the principal amount of mortgage loans. The proposed law has received stiff opposition from the banking and mortgage industries, but the Obama administration and Democratic lawmakers have been unrelenting in pushing the so-called cramdown legislation through Congress.