Tag Archives: HUD

California's Inland Empire Economic Recovery Corporation (IEERC) recently announced it will receive a $1 million grant from HUD. The non-profit, which works to stabilize real estate values in distressed neighborhoods, will use the grant to purchase and rehabilitate foreclosed properties. IEERC recently made its first offer to purchase 34 foreclosed houses from Fannie Mae.

State attorneys general are holding meetings with the nation's largest mortgage servicers this week to negotiate a settlement agreement for the robo-signing issues that surfaced last fall. The most controversial piece of the AGs initial proposal - mandated principal write-downs - has reportedly been dropped from the discussions. The primary issue now is the amount of fines to be levied, which the states want to use to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure.

HUD has released a report detailing recent business activity at the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). It shows that the federal agency's inventory of REO homes has ballooned as sales from this portfolio fell sharply during the final months of 2010 and early part of this year. The number of repossessed single-family properties held at the end of February 2011 was 68,801. That figure represents an increase of more than 50 percent from a year earlier.

Berkadia Commercial Mortgage has added three key executives to its ranks within the last few weeks. Industry veteran Luther Peacock has joined the company as chief risk officer. Stephannie Mower has been named managing director and will lead the company's newly launched Investment Client Services business. And Mortgage banker Mike Duggan has joined Berkadia's St. Louis office, which is the center of operations for its HUD and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) platform.

The U.S. government has filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank and its mortgage unit, claiming that Germany's largest bank ""repeatedly lied"" to get into a program to select mortgages to be insured by FHA against default. Once part of the program, U.S. authorities say Deutsche Bank ""recklessly"" selected mortgages that violated the program rules ""in blatant disregard"" of whether borrowers could make their mortgage payments. The U.S. government is seeking $1 billion in damages and penalties.

The new president and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), former commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration, David H. Stevens started his tenure with the trade group with an announcement that he has appointed Marcia M. Davies as his chief of staff, effective immediately. Davies most recently worked at HUD, where she served as senior advisor to Stevens. She previously spent 21 years at Freddie Mac, where she held a variety of officer positions.

Homeowners who participate in default counseling are more likely to have their loans modified, according to a study from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Policymakers have increasingly turned to education and counseling to remedy problems that impede borrowers' ability to make their mortgage payments, but the trade group's report comes on the heels of federal budget cuts that have eliminated $88 million to fund HUD's counseling program.

On Monday, HUD launched a new campaign in Miami, Chicago, and Los Angeles called ""Know It. Avoid It. Report It."" The targeted operation aims to direct distressed homeowners to trusted resources and counselors for help to avoid foreclosure. It also solicits the support of homeowners in shutting down scammers who target the elderly, Hispanics, and African Americans.

The budget resolution approved by Congress to keep the federal government running through September includes a package of cuts to federal agency budgets, one of which is HUD's Housing Counseling Program. In lawmakers' efforts to trim agency expenditures, $88 million slated to fund counseling efforts on foreclosure and reverse mortgages has been zeroed out. A HUD spokesperson described the curtailment as ""painful cuts,"" noting that the program provides grant funding to about 2,000 agencies across the country.

The Federal Housing Administration's Mortgagee Review Board has settled with Massachusetts mortgage lender First American Mortgage Trust (FAMT) for failing to verify whether borrowers could sustain mortgage payments prior to refinancing loans. FAMT agreed to pay $72,500, reimburse FHA for past insurance claims, and indemnify FHA's insurance fund for any claims to be paid on certain mortgages should they default within the next 60 months.