Tag Archives: Foreclosure Prevention

HUD secretary Shaun Donovan announced the department is working to speed up federal disaster assistance to areas in New York and New Jersey following the passage of the storm. HUD is also granting a 90-day forbearance on foreclosures of home mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA).

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac servicers will be able to skip a step when attempting to get a short sale or deed-in-lieu of foreclosure approved. On Wednesday, the GSEs announced standard delegation agreements were reached with nine mortgage insurers to allow servicers to approve of short sales and deeds-in-lieu without a separate review process with the mortgage insurer. The agreement takes effect November 1, along with additional short sale guidelines the GSEs announced in August.

Completed foreclosures continued their descent into September, falling 31 percent from a year ago, according to data from CoreLogic. The analytics company reported the number of homes lost to foreclosure in September dropped to 57,000. The decline is a steep drop from 83,000 in September 2011, and a decrease from the upwardly revised 59,000 in August. Before the housing crises, completed foreclosures were much lower than the sinking figures reported recently. Between 2000 and 2006, completed foreclosures averaged 21,000 per month.

Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) reached a settlement with Colorado Attorney General John Suthers for $1.8 million over former document execution practices by LPS subsidiaries, DocX, LLC and LPS Default Solutions.

In the report from the Center for Responsible Lending, researchers conclude that based on the 10.9 million loans that entered foreclosure between 2007 and 2011, approximately $1.95 trillion in property value has been lost or will be lost by residents who live close to foreclosed properties. This estimate includes losses stemming from completed foreclosures and future losses projected on foreclosure starts. The average spillover cost per family is or will be $21,000 in household wealth, or 7 percent of median home value, according to the report.

The president and CEO of Ocwen Financial Corporation was honored recently at an annual gala hosted by Empowering and Strengthening Ohio's People (ESOP), a HUD-approved foreclosure prevention agency.

Less than half of the states' $2.5 billion from the national mortgage servicing settlement is being used for housing initiatives as intended, according to Enterprise Community Partners. It's been six months since a federal judge approved the agreement between the nation's five largest mortgage servicers and state and federal officials, and Enterprise says to date, states have announced housing- and foreclosure-related plans for $966 million of their settlement share; $988 million has been diverted to states' general funds or non-housing uses; and $588 million has yet to be allocated.

When a home is sold through a foreclosure sale, at times the debt on the mortgage is not fully recovered through the sale. The remaining amount is the deficiency, and this amount is passed on to the mortgage owner to absorb or to try and collect from the borrower. The FHFA's Office of Inspector General (OIG) revealed in a report Wednesday that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a recovery rate of only 0.22 percent when pursuing deficiencies, leaving room for much improvement.

Even though the number of foreclosure filings has risen dramatically in recent months in some parts of the country--specifically in judicial states--the ratings agency DBRS expects the total number of foreclosure filings to show evidence of a steady decline in 2013 when compared to 2012. This is due to ""the record number of servicers that are using short sales as their primary loss mitigation tool to prevent delinquent loans from entering foreclosure,"" the agency's analysts said in a research note issued Monday.

August data from HOPE NOW revealed mortgage servicers gave an estimated 75,968 homeowners permanent loan modifications during the month. In July, total loan modifications was higher at 82,679. HOPE NOW also reported the industry has seen 5.75 million loan modifications since 2007. Of those modifications, about 4.68 million were proprietary loan modifications, while more than 1 million were from HAMP.