REO

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is holding meetings with the nation's four largest lenders to address growing concerns about their processes for short sales and selling REO homes. The trade group's leadership team has already met with representatives from Bank of America and Wells Fargo to discuss, as NAR put it, ""the problems Realtors face every day when working to get deals to the closing table."" Meetings are scheduled later this year with Chase Home Mortgage and CitiMortgage.

The National Association of Women REO Brokerages (NAWRB) intends to fill a void within the distressed services industry by advocating for a uniform, industry certification for women business owners. No mechanism currently exists to ensure that women-owned businesses (WOBs) are actually woman owned and operated, according to the Irvine, California-headquartered organization.

It's no secret that the housing market in Southern Florida is bleak, but a new report from Condo Vultures, LCC reveals that things are looking up for the Sunshine State. The locally based tracking firm says lenders filed foreclosure actions on $3.5 billion in outstanding loans in South Florida during the third quarter, which is a 38 percent decrease compared to a year earlier. According to Condo Vultures, it looks as if 2009 could turn out to be the worst year for foreclosures in South Florida.

Home value depreciation remained steady in August after improvement stalled in July, according to a new report released by Zillow Friday. The company's market data shows that nationally, home values fell 0.3 percent between July and August and declined 3.8 percent from their year-ago levels. According to Dr. Stan Humphries, Zillow's chief economist, the data clearly illustrates that a bottom in national home values has not yet been hit and will come later this year or in the beginning of 2011 at the earliest.

Integrated Mortgage Services has announced the release of its new end-to-end REO Broker Back Office solution. The solution is designed to help REO brokers cost-effectively manage all administrative functions, such as paying utilities and HOA dues, as well as performing inspection and preservation work.

The city of Belen, New Mexico has planned their first-ever statewide Code Enforcement Summit, designed to benefit the code enforcement community by building relationships with field services companies who perform preservation services. The summit will take place Wednesday, Oct 13 and Thursday, October 14 at the Holiday Inn Express Conference Center in Belen.

RealtyTrac introduced on Thursday a new feature on its Web site for its subscribers. The site, which is an online marketplace of foreclosure properties will now offer a recently sold feature on its page, that will allow subscribers to see details about all properties sold in the past three, six, and nine months for an area.

New data released by the HOPE NOW Alliance Thursday shows that during the month of August, mortgage servicers completed approximately 116,000 proprietary loan modifications for homeowners and 33,000 mods under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), for a total of 149,000. The report also shows that foreclosures are continuing to increase, despite the strides made in foreclosure prevention efforts. In August, new foreclosures were initiated on 245,015 properties, while foreclosure sales were completed on 101,780.

First Preston Housing Solutions, LLC, a nationwide, full-service REO marketing, management, and real estate advisory services company, has named Michele John Kelaart its new company president. Kelaart brings to the company 20 years of experience investing and managing distressed residential mortgages and REO inventories with a large multinational investment firm.

Data released by Clear Capital Thursday shows that quarter-over-quarter home prices were down 0.2 percent in September compared to the previous month's reading. It's the first time in months the company has seen national home prices slip into negative territory. Clear Capital says signs of a slowdown are apparent and likely mark an early onset of the typically weaker winter season. However, the company says home prices are still 10 percent above their 2009 lows, so the risk of carving out a new trough this year remains small.