According to numbers released by DataQuick, last month's home sales numbers in Southern California experienced a modest climb from last year. Median home sales prices in Southland rose year-over-year in April for the first time in 16 months. The median price paid for a home in Southland was $290,000 this year, up from $280,000 in March 2012 and April 2011. This increase is attributed to gains in the region's coastal counties, where home sales made up 71.5 percent of the area's total, an increase from last year's 68 percent. Also cited as cause for this year's higher numbers is the fact that foreclosed and discounted properties made up a smaller portion of sales.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has removed Allonhill from the Independent Foreclosure Review due to concerns about third parties.

Wells Fargo & Co. is taking its NeighborhoodLIFT program to Florida in June to help stabilize neighborhoods affected by the foreclosure crisis.

Rogers Townsend & Thomas, PC, announced the addition of three new attorneys to the firm's Charlotte office.

Gateway Mortgage Group is expanding its operations with a new branch in Omaha, Nebraska. The new location will be staffed by eight loan officers, including Kent Geschwender, a former branch manager of MetLife Home Loans. The Omaha branch will be the company's largest.

Just when it seemed like they could not fall any further, fixed-rate mortgages continued to drop, breaking record-low numbers once again, according to Freddie Mac's weekly mortgage market survey. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.79 percent (0.7 point) for the week ending May 17, slipping from last week's average of 3.83 percent. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage also fell, ending the week at 3.04 percent (0.7 point). Bankrate.com, which releases a weekly survey using data provided by the top 10 banks and thrifts in the top 10 markets, reported a record-low average for the 30-year fixed, which dropped below 4 percent.

First time claims were unchanged at 370,000 for the week ended May 12 after the number of initial claims filed for the previous week was revised upward, the Labor Department reported Thursday. Economists had expected initial claims would decrease to 365,000. The Labor Department had initially reported 367,000 claims filed for the week ended May 5. The revision turned that report to an increase of 2,000 from a previously reported decline of 1,000. Continuing claims - reported on a one week lag - increased 18,000 to 3,265,000 after the preceding week's report was bumped up to 3,247,000 from an originally reported 3,269,000, coincidentally another 18,000 increase from the original report.

Foreclosure filings - default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions - totaled 188,780 in April 2012, which is the lowest monthly total since July 2007, according to RealtyTrac's Foreclosure Market Report. April foreclosure activity also fell 5 percent from the previous month and was down 14 percent from a year ago in April. When analyzing foreclosure activity according to judicial processes, non-judicial states declined both yearly and monthly, while judicial states decreased monthly but not yearly.

Buying a home is the biggest financial investment many people will ever make. It's also an investment that, in recent years, has become lost for millions. According to data from CoreLogic, since September 2008, there have been 3.5 million completed foreclosures. Through counseling, HUD found homeowners are more likely to stay in their properties, even when facing foreclosure. HUD released reports on two types of counseling: pre-purchase and foreclosure prevention. In both studies, HUD found housing counseling significantly improved the likelihood homeowners remained in their homes. For those who enrolled into pre-purchase counseling, HUD found that 35 percent of participants became homeowners within 18 months of pre-purchase counseling and only one of those buyers fell behind on mortgage payments.

Auction.com announced that Andrew Platt will be the new managing director for the New York-based capital markets team. Platt is a former senior member of the fixed income teams at UBS, Bank of America and Lehman Brothers.