News

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) recently announced that 400,000 homeowners have refinanced their mortgages with HUD’s affordable mortgage insurance program. Since expanding its refinance program in September 2007, HUD’s Federal Housing Administration (FHA) has helped more distressed homeowners keep their homes by utilizing FHA’s safe and affordable mortgage financing.

California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed Senate Bill 133 into law last month. The bill, sponsored by the California Land Title Association (CLTA), goes into effect on January 1, 2009 and requires that title insurance sales people be registered with the state.

Colorado-based Mortgage Cadence Inc, a provider of enterprise lending solutions (ELS) for the financial services industry, recently announced that it is helping Senior Lending Network, a program of World Alliance Financial Corp and a recognized leader in reverse mortgages, automate back office workflow for its reverse lending and document preparation process.

Standard & Poor’s released its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices yesterday, reporting on data through August 2008. The study is considered one of the leading measures of U.S. home prices and shows continued broad based declines in the prices of existing single family homes across the country – a trend that prevailed throughout the first half of 2008 and has continued into the second half.

According to a report on PR Newswire earlier this week, mortgage fraud activity dropped during the third quarter. This conclusion was based on data from the FraudBlogger Index published by MortgageDaily.

Champion Mortgage, a division of Nationstar Mortgage LLC, announced the launch of its REO Financing Partner Program yesterday. The program, developed specifically with today’s distressed market conditions in mind, has shortened turn times on REO foreclosure sales by 30 percent, which in turn has helped decrease loss severity on REO properties by over 10 percent, the company said.

Mortgage bankers and servicers require a comprehensive, flexible, and scalable REO management system that integrates with their own in-house and third party systems to provide automated workflow management and high visibility throughout the property management life cycle.

HOPE NOW announced yesterday that, due to the continuing efforts of HOPE NOW and the broader mortgage industry, 2.47 million homeowners have avoided foreclosure and been able to stay in their homes since the organization began its efforts in July 2007.

Nielson & Sherry, PSC, a Newport, Kentucky firm which handles concerns related to the mortgage, lending, default, and real estate communities, recently announced the appointment of Dan Israelson to the role of director of client relations and business development.

Between them, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac own $5.4 trillion of the nation’s $12 trillion in residential mortgage debt. As part of the federal government’s takeover of the two government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs), the U.