News

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley’s office announced last week that it has secured a preliminary injunction against subprime lender Option One Mortgage Corp. and its parent company H&R Block Mortgage Corp.

The First American Corporation has developed a new reverse mortgage score to help servicers identify senior homeowner candidates for a government-insured Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM), who might otherwise face foreclosure.

Housing Predictor, which provides housing forecasts in 250 markets, has identified 10 markets where the regional economies are healthy and have strong potential for increasing prosperity. These housing markets have bucked the national trend in 2008 and avoided the subprime crisis, the consultancy says.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) proposed on Friday to spend $24 billion of the $700 billion bailout package to help 1.5 million households avoid foreclosure. This new plan is a mild deviation from the FDIC’s $40 billion incentive-based foreclosure plan put forth to Congress committee members in late October, under which the government would guarantee part of homeowners’ modified loans.

Single-family home sales in Connecticut dropped 5.3 percent in September from a year ago, bucking a 12-month trend of double-digit percentage declines, according to a new report from The Warren Group, publisher of The Commercial Record and a provider of New England real estate data.

Integrated Asset Services LLC (IAS), an REO management and disposition company based in Denver, Colorado, released its IAS360 House Price Index for September 2008. The monthly report showed a 2.1 percent decline in house prices on a national level in September, with an annual decline of 13.

ForeclosureRadar, a website that is said to track every California foreclosure with daily auction updates, issued its California Foreclosure Report for October this week. Foreclosure sales dropped by 39.

In its latest attempt to thaw the country’s credit freeze, the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Federal Reserve, and Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a joint statement yesterday urging banks to start lending again.

Webster Bank N.A., a subsidiary of Webster Financial Corporation, announced today that it is halting foreclosures for 90 days, becoming the latest bank to expand its mortgage assistance program to keep more families in their homes.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) released its final rule under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) yesterday to improve disclosures in the home financing process. RESPA, a law originally enacted in 1974, now includes new Good Faith Estimate (GFE) and HUD-1 Settlement Statement forms, which require lenders and mortgage brokers to clearly disclose key loan terms and closing costs.