St. Louis-based, Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative, announced Wednesday that is has taken steps to ensure its members have the information and processes in place that are needed to comply with the SAFE Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).

As a pilot initiative, HUD'S office of single family asset management (SFAM) will use New Berlin, Wisconsin-based Marshall & Swift's (M&S) cost estimator data and solutions to provide repair, replacement, maintenance, or improvement costs on Federal Housing Administration (FHA) housing units, M&S recently announced.

In an announcement Wednesday, Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray said he has filed a lawsuit against New York-based Barclays Capital Real Estate, doing business as HomEq Servicing.

In an effort to help families facing a foreclosure in the midst of the holiday season, both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae made announcements today and suspended foreclosure evictions from December 19, 2009 through January 3, 2010. In Freddie Mac’s announcement, the company said it will suspend all evictions involving foreclosed, occupied single family and two to four unit properties that had Freddie Mac-owned mortgages.

Heading into 2010, the status of the commercial real estate market may not be so gloom and doom.

TenantAccess says it has an answer to that looming shadow inventory of foreclosures and REOs that so many analysts fear could get in the way of the nation's housing recovery and lead to a second round of price deterioration for residential properties.

First American Title Insurance Company announced today that Patty Beverly has been selected as the first recipient of the Orange County Escrow Association's new Lifetime Achievement Award, in recognition of her commitment and contributions to the progression of the escrow industry.

The GSEs' regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), is asking the U.S. Treasury to increase its financial lifeline for the nation's two largest mortgage financiers.

Citigroup is suspending foreclosure actions for about 4,000 borrowers scheduled to lose their home during the holiday season.

Avista Solutions www.AvistaSolutions.com, a Columbia South Carolina-based provider of loan origination software (LOS) solutions for the mortgage industry, has announced that its Avista Agile suite of products, whether for retail, wholesale, or correspondent lending, has been updated to be compliant with the changes to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) that go into effect on January 1, 2010.