Foreclosure Moratorium
By Krista Franks | 12/01/2011
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac announced temporary eviction moratoriums on all single-family homes and two-to-four unit properties over the holidays. Both companies will enforce the moratorium from December 19 through January 2. The suspension will not affect the pre- or post-foreclosure processes. Servicers may continue the administrative processes involved in foreclosures, but evictions will be delayed until after the start of the new year.
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By Krista Franks | 12/01/2011
Two California divisions of the Occupy Wall Street movement -- Occupy LA and Occupy Santa Cruz -- are beginning to focus their efforts on halting foreclosures. Mario Brito, leader of Occupy LA, announced a plan this week to pressure both banks and government officials to impose a foreclosure moratorium. Also this week, Occupy Santa Cruz sent a letter to its County Board of Supervisors calling on board members to invoke a foreclosure moratorium and set up a task force to study foreclosure practices.
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By Carrie Bay | 09/19/2011
Banks held about 476,000 homes that they repossessed from delinquent mortgage borrowers as of the end of July, according to Barclays Capital. That tally represents a 17 percent contraction from 574,000 REOs on the books just 10 months earlier, in September of 2010, just as the robo-signing scandal began grabbing headlines. According to Barclays' analysis, the average number of months a loan has spent in foreclosure has climbed from around 10 months just before October of last year to more than 12 months today.
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By Carrie Bay | 09/14/2011
New Jersey's Superior Court has lifted the last of six injunctions handed down late last year, giving Ally Financial and its GMAC Mortgage unit the go-ahead to resume foreclosure actions in the state. The Superior Court judge issued an order this week stating that GMAC had demonstrated the "reliability of its processes" and is "permitted to resume prosecution of uncontested foreclosure proceedings." Five other servicers were given the green light to begin the regular order of processing foreclosures in the state last month.
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By Carrie Bay | 08/17/2011
A New Jersey judge has given the green light for five of six major mortgage servicers to resume uncontested foreclosures in the state after a formal review of their procedures demonstrated the "reliability of their processes." Bank of America, Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and OneWest Bank have been granted permission to restart foreclosures. Ally's GMAC Mortgage is awaiting the court's decision. Since the beginning of 2011, just over 6,000 foreclosures have surfaced in the state courts, compared to 35,000 filings at this time last year.
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By Carrie Bay | 08/04/2011
Data released by Lender Processing Services (LPS) Thursday indicates foreclosure and delinquency numbers are on the rise again.
The company says foreclosures were initiated on 217,486 loans in June, up more than 10 percent from May. The national delinquency rate also increased to 8.15 percent.
As a supplement to this month's report, LPS examined its historical data and found that nearly half of all loans originated in the U.S. since 2005 would not qualify as a Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) under regulators' current proposal.
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By Carrie Bay | 06/13/2011
The nation's Capitol stands out as the "shining star" in nearly every market report that crosses the wire. Washington, D.C. has consistently resisted home price declines, sales activity bucks widespread trends, and foreclosure numbers, too, have been almost non-existent due to an unofficial moratorium. Is it the absence of foreclosure property that's behind D.C.'s defiant market performance and will it turn now that emergency mediation rules have been enacted to restart foreclosures? Local experts say no, D.C. is just a market to itself.
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By Heather Hill Cernoch | 06/01/2011
Wells Fargo will host a free workshop Thursday for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Wells Fargo Financial, Wachovia Mortgage, and Wells Fargo Home Equity customers facing financial hardships. Hundreds of South Carolina homeowners are invited to the event in Columbia, South Carolina. About 50 home retention team members will be on hand to work one-on-one with customers to explore options such as workouts and loan modifications.
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By Heather Hill Cernoch | 04/22/2011
Foreclosures in Florida dropped by 12 percent from March to April, according to ForeclosureDataOnline.com. Since the fourth quarter of last year, the state's foreclosure activity is down 47 percent. The site attributes this slowdown to the recent robo-signing foreclosure documentation problems exposed last fall, which resulted in temporary moratoriums and court delays where foreclosures require approval by a judge. However, March data suggest foreclosures will soon rise again as banks continue to work through their backlog of cases.
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By Carrie Bay | 04/04/2011
The nation's largest mortgage servicers foreclosed on 95,067 homes during the fourth quarter of 2010, a 49 percent drop from the number of completed foreclosures during the previous quarter, according to a new report from two regulatory agencies. Newly initiated foreclosures also decreased but by a much smaller ratio of 8 percent. Because new foreclosures outpaced completed foreclosures, the inventory of foreclosures in process increased to 1,290,253, representing 3.9 percent of all serviced loans among the largest national firms.
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