Foreclosure

The government recently ramped up its efforts to help at-risk borrowers, but according to a recent opinion poll by Destin, Florida-based Housing Predictor, that's not what the majority of people want. Despite the impact it would have on the U.S. economy, 78 percent of those polled said they want the government to let home foreclosures run their course instead of making efforts to stop the crisis.

Countdown To Buy, a next generation online real estate marketplace, announced Tuesday that it successfully generated accepted offers on foreclosed properties in 30 days or less. The properties were located in Dallas and were listed on the company's Web site on March 5, 2010. And before the month's end, offers have already been accepted.

Florida has been aptly dubbed one of the nation's foreclosure hotspots, and its courts have a wall of foreclosure cases to back up that claim. The backlog has gotten so bad, that it's pushed the Florida State Courts Administration to ask legislators for $9.6 million to bring in additional case managers and judges to help clear the still-growing glut of case files. The state's court administrators estimate that there are currently 500,000 pending foreclosure cases. Local judges say ""the numbers are just overwhelming.""

In an announcement Tuesday, Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) said foreclosure sales for its lending and banking clients soared this past week in nationwide live and online auctions, which generated $47.4 million in sales on 625 foreclosed residential properties, commercial properties, and notes.

Various HOPE NOW servicers, including Bank of America, Chase, Citi, GMAC, Suntrust, Wells Fargo, and others, assisted more than 1,300 troubled borrowers during three homeownership preservation events held across the Pacific Northwest last week. According to HOPE NOW, 532 families attended the first of the three events, which was held in Portland, Oregon on March 23. And the two-day event in Bellevue, Washington on March 25 and March 26 saw an additional 796 homeowners.

The delinquent unpaid balance for commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) increased to $47.82 billion in February, according to investment rating agency Realpoint, LLC. The overall delinquent unpaid balance was up almost 300 percent from February 2009, when only $11.98 billion was reported. Last month's numbers represent a delinquency ratio of 6 percent, and Realpoint says it expects the growth trend to continue, potentially reaching 12 percent by year-end.

Marshall & Ilsley Corporation (M&I), a diversified financial services corporation headquartered in Milwaukee, announced Monday that it has extended its foreclosure moratorium an additional 90 days - through June 30, 2010. The moratorium is on all owner-occupied residential loans for customers who agree to work in good faith to reach a successful repayment agreement, and it applies to applicable loans in all M&I markets.

In hopes of stimulating the local housing market, Broward County in South Florida, which had the state's third-highest foreclosure rate in February, recently launched a new Web site to auction off foreclosed homes. The first online auction will take place on March 30, 2010.

First American CoreLogic estimates that the typical underwater homeowner will not begin to surface until late 2015 to early 2016. It's an even longer stretch for some of the most depressed markets, where the company says the typical borrower in negative equity may not experience positive equity until 2020 or later. Of the markets studied, the Washington D.C. area is expected to return to positive territory first, while homeowners in Detroit will have the longest duration of negative equity.

The administration announced Monday that it is expanding its initiative to provide funding for state housing finance agencies to develop their own localized mortgage assistance programs. A second round of funding, totaling $600 million, will go to five additional states: North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and South Carolina. Last month, $1.5 billion in aid was allocated to be divided between California, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and Michigan.