The Colorado Housing and Finance Authority announced this week that 35 percent of all its home mortgage customers have purchased REOs, a new record for the housing authority. So far in 2008, CHFA has closed over $100 million in mortgage loans for previously foreclosed REO properties.

Zaio Corporation, a technology and database company providing appraisal services to lenders nationwide, announced the appointment of Mari Beth Pietropaoli as national account representative today. Pietropaoli will be responsible for product sales with an emphasis on appraisal products.

Two California-based companies, the Los Angeles Times Media Group and CataList Homes, in a joint national venture with global online auctioneer GoIndustry DoveBid, announced the launch of Zetabid yesterday.

The Mortgage Bankers Association today announced that Jay Brinkmann has been named the organization’s chief economist and SVP of research and economics. Brinkmann has been with the MBA since 2001 and has served as the organization’s VP of research for most of that period.

Standard & Poor’s released its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices today, which show the trend of broad based declines in existing home prices across the United States continued through the first half of 2008.

iMortgage Services LLC, an independent national provider of collateral valuation and settlement services for the residential mortgage industry, has announced the release of its Tier3 comprehensive collateral reevaluation report service.

Existing-home sales in July rose to their highest level in five months, according to a report released by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) today. The NAR checked the seemingly good news by noting though that overall sales have hovered in a relatively narrow range for the past 11 months.

At the Federal Reserve’s annual policy retreat at the Teton Mountain resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming on Friday, Chairman Ben Bernanke cautioned that there was no quick fix to the economic damage caused by the collapse of the housing market.

ModCo LLC has launched ModCo Solutions, a new division that the company says it created to help mortgage servicers cope with increasing foreclosures and changes in mortgage servicing laws. Foreclosures continue to climb to record levels, and the California-based company said it seeks to provide the infrastructure for servicers to not only meet existing and new regulations, but to reach out to troubled borrowers before foreclosure is the only option.

The Department of Veterans Affairs announced this week that it will raise ceilings on its no-down payment home loans, from the current $417,000 to as much as $729,000, in certain locations. The increases are effective immediately under legislation recently enacted by President Bush’s signing of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.