Home sales in the Lone Star State are on the rise. According to the latest Texas Quarterly Housing Report released Monday by the Texas Association of Realtors, a total of 66,079 existing single-family homes were sold during the second quarter of this year, soaring 14 percent from the same quarter last year. This marked the third consecutive quarter of year-over-year increases.

Deceptive mortgage relief marketers continue to prey on financially distressed homeowners, but one such company has been stopped in its tracks. Home Assure, LLC, has been charged by the Federal Trade Commission for deceiving consumers with promises that it could save their homes from foreclosure. To settle these charges, the company must refund customers $2.4 million, and it can no longer sell mortgage loan modification or foreclosure relief services.

The BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill is expected to have a grave--and costly--impact on coastal area real estate. According to a recent report by CoreLogic, the impact of the spill on home values in coastal communities already affected by the spill is expected to range from $648 million over one year to as much as $3 billion over five years. And in the event that the unlikely, worst-case scenario occurs and the spill reaches around the Florida Keys and up the Atlantic coast of Florida, the additional losses could reach up to $28 billion over five years, CoreLogic said.

DocuTech Corp, an Idaho Falls, Idaho-based provider of compliance services and documentation technology for the mortgage industry, recently announced that it signed 25 new clients in the first two quarters of this year, marking 14 consecutive quarters of growth for the 19-year-old company. According to DocuTech, lenders look to the company for sophisticated, but not complicated, mortgage document tools that seamlessly integrate with existing loan origination systems, thus enabling mortgage professionals to generate documents locally.

Fannie Mae has opened a mortgage help center in the Windy City in order to provide counseling and other services for struggling homeowners in the greater metro area with loans owned by the GSE. The new center in Chicago is the second facility and third announced partnership in Fannie Mae's planned series of mortgage help centers across the country. The GSE said it partnered on this initiative with Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, major mortgage servicers, and civic and community leaders from across the region.

HUD recently announced the availability of $79 million in grants for a broad range of housing counseling programs to help families find and preserve housing. This represents an increase of $21 million, or 27 percent, over last year's funding. According to HUD, these grants will be awarded competitively to approximately 550 HUD-approved counseling agencies and state housing finance agencies across the nation to help families stave off foreclosure, avoid mortgage scams, and improve their credit scores.

Mortgage rates have hit record lows across the nation, but not as low as the rate being offered through a new program in West Virginia. According to a recent announcement by the state's governor, the West Virginia Housing Development Fund has launched a new mortgage program for West Virginia families that includes a 30-year loan at a fixed rate of approximately 3.5 percent. This historically-low rate is achieved as a result of a $35 million bond issue coupled with a special bond refunding by the Housing Development Fund. However, funds for this program are limited.

Though volume remains low on an absolute level, commercial and multifamily mortgage loan originations seem to be on the journey upward. According to the Quarterly Survey of Commercial/Multifamily Mortgage Bankers Originations released Wednesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association, second quarter 2010 commercial and multifamily mortgage loan originations inched up 1 percent from the same period last year and surged 35 percent from the first quarter of this year.

Even with record-low mortgage rates, many refinancing borrowers are choosing to pay down their loan balances rather than borrow more money. According to a recent report by Freddie Mac, cash-in borrowers - those who reduced their principal balance by paying in additional money at the closing table - represented 22 percent of all borrowers who refinanced during the second quarter, up from 19 percent the previous quarter. This, Freddie said, tied the record for the third highest cash-in share since the GSE began keeping records on refinancing patterns in 1985.

The residential real estate market in Massachusetts seems to be on the mend. According to a recent report by the Warren Group, a provider of real estate data in New England, the Bay State saw year-over-year increases in both sales and prices of single-family homes and condos in June and in the second quarter.