The House Financial Services Committee passed by a large margin a bill that toughens regulation on credit rating agencies, and for the first time, sets conditions that would allow investors to sue the agencies.

Neil Barofsky, Congress' special inspector general for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), makes no bones about his dissatisfaction and frustration with the Treasury's management of the $700 billion purse.

""Standard & Poor's"":http://www.standardandpoors.com Fixed Income Risk Management Services (FIRMS), an analytics and research unit separate from S&P's ratings business, and Santa Ana, California's ""Veros Real Estate Solutions"":http://www.veros.com have partnered to provide property valuations on loans underlying residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS).

""Freddie Mac"":http://www.freddiemac.com released the results of its ""weekly mortgage interest rate survey"":http://www.freddiemac.com/pmms/release.html?week=44&year=2009&display=release Thursday, which showed little change in long-term rates – a good sign for the nation's fragile housing markets.

""Standard & Poor's"":http://www.standardandpoors.com has placed seven mortgage insurance companies on its CreditWatch with negative implications, meaning a downgrade is likely.

A federal judge ordered Capmark Financial Group this week to push back the deadline it had set to receive bids for its commercial mortgage servicing business.

The despair and desperation that often accompanies a foreclosure seems to have gotten the best of one California couple but it turned to outright violence when they kidnapped the loan modification consultants they'd hired to help them. Daniel Weston and Mary Ann Parmelee, aided by three accomplices, are said to have lured loan agents Lamond Dean and Gustavo Canez to a home in Glendale, where they imprisoned the pair, robbed them, and beat them an attack that the Los Angeles Times said involved wooden knuckles and a handgun.

It looks like another round for David against Goliath as renters appear to have foiled the landmark $5.4 billion 2006 deal for two Manhattan apartment complexes.

The rate of decline in home prices is slowing so that the bottom of the market is now expected to be reached in March, First American CoreLogic said in its monthly analysis.

The U.S. Senate's chief Democrat, Majority Leader Harry Reid (Nevada), said Wednesday that his party has reached a consensus to extend the first-time homebuyer tax credit, which is set to expire November 30.