Service Providers
By Carrie Bay | 03/11/2010
Foreclosure filings issued to U.S. homeowners have fallen for the second straight month.
According to new data released by RealtyTrac Thursday, default notices, scheduled auctions, and bank repossessions were reported on 308,524 properties in February. That's a 2 percent decrease from January, when foreclosure activity dropped by 10 percent.
February's numbers are still 6 percent above the level reported one year earlier, but RealtyTrac says it's the smallest annual increase the company has tracked since January 2006.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/10/2010
GMAC Financial Services has auctioned off $250 million of problem mortgage assets, using Citigroup Inc. as its broker on the deal, according to a report from American Banker. GMAC reported in February that its $5 billion loss during the final months of last year was largely the result of “legacy assets in the mortgage operations.” A regulatory filing by the company this week also revealed that its CFO, Robert Hull, has resigned, effective at the end of this month.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/10/2010
New York-based Lend America and its senior-level strategist and VP, Michael Ashley, have been permanently banned from doing business for the Federal Housing Administration, according to recently released court documents. Ashley helped build Lend America into one of the most lucrative FHA loan producers, but federal attorneys say all the while he's been in violation of an earlier industry ban, when he plead guilty to wire fraud conspiracy in 1993.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/10/2010
An activist group who says its purpose is to investigate and prosecute government corruption is in a federal court battle to get its hands on documents detailing the political contributions made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
The organization says its been trying to get access to the GSEs' records since May of last year but has been denied by the companies' regulator, who is shielding the documents under claims that the government-controlled firms are private corporations. No. 2 on the GSEs' list of campaign contribution recipients is President Obama.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/10/2010
Marking the sixth straight month of declines, national house prices fell 2.3 percent in January, according to the latest IAS360 House Price Index (HPI) released Wednesday by Denver-based Integrated Asset Services, LLC (IAS).
The culprit? IAS says unusually severe winter weather in large regions of the country may have added to housing market woes. The January numbers resulted in the largest single-month decline in the IAS360 in more than a year.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/10/2010
At a public hearing scheduled for Tuesday, March 16, 2010, the Nevada Supreme Court will consider amendments to the rules governing the state's Foreclosure Mediation Program (FMP). If the amendments are approved, this will be the third set of rule changes since the FMP was enacted on July 1, 2009.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/10/2010
On Wednesday, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and DocuSign unveiled the DocuSign Realtor Edition, an exclusive online eSignature service designed specifically for Realtors. The new Realtor Edition allows NAR members to electronically sign agreements with buyers and sellers, which saves Realtors time and provides client convenience.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/10/2010
Fitch Ratings warned Tuesday that the still-weak financial fundamentals of the nation's lenders have cemented its rating outlook for the U.S. banking sector as negative.
The New York-based agency did note, though, that many of the factors that have been putting downward pressure on banks' ratings, including lending and liquidity, are easing. However, commercial real estate exposure, particularly for regional banks, as well as consumer mortgages are expected to weigh heavy on lenders' earnings into 2011.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/10/2010
Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS) recently announced that its LPS Auction Solutions division will conduct an online auction of foreclosed homes from the hard-hit states of Arizona, California, and Nevada.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/10/2010
An increase in purchase activity for the week ending March 5, 2010 caused mortgage loan application volume to nudge up 0.5 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis from the prior week, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday.
According to MBA's Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey, the seasonally-adjusted Purchase Index increased 5.7 percent on a week-to-week basis, but the Refinance Index fell 1.5 percent.
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