Foreclosure

On Tuesday, Lenders Asset Management Corporation (LAMCO) announced the company's approach to help mortgage servicers fully comply with the federal government's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program, set to take effect April 5. In efforts to respond in a timely fashion to the inevitable influx of short sale requests expected as a result of HAFA, LAMCO says it is prepared to execute accelerated short sale transactions through its quality management system.

The share of home purchase transactions involving distressed properties surged to almost half in February, according to an industry survey released Monday. Last month distressed properties - those involving homes acquired as part of a foreclosure or pre-foreclosure sale - accounted for 48.1 percent of the home purchase transactions tracked by the survey. It was the highest distressed property market share seen since last July, with short sales accounting for the largest percentage of transactions.

Michaelson, Connor, & Boul, Inc. of Huntington Beach, California was recently hired by HUD to ensure that FHA-approved lenders and servicers convey foreclosed properties to the agency in acceptable condition.

The first Retaining Occupancy on Foreclosure (ROOF) Agreement was recently signed in the city of Detroit. Created to help combat the blight problems in Detroit by cutting down on the number of homes left vacant after foreclosure, the goal of the program is to salvage Detroit neighborhoods and greatly reduce the number of vacant homes by keeping foreclosed homes occupied by either the owner or tenant until the property is sold at an REO sale.

Servicers are working faster and more diligently to convert trial modifications to permanent status under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). But the bitter truth is that some homeowners won't qualify for long-term relief even after making their trial payments. To offer these homeowners another option, Fannie Mae is instituting the ""Alternative Modification"" (Alt Mod) and requiring all its servicers to evaluate a borrower for the new solution before proceeding with foreclosure.

Real estate technology firm eBrokerHouse recently announced the launch of Rapid Trustee Sale (RTS), a Web-based trustee sale management system for real estate investors and/or brokers with clients who are bidding at foreclosure auctions.

The Treasury has committed $50 billion of Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) funds to the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) to pay servicers for helping homeowners avoid foreclosure. New estimates released by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) show that the administration is expected to use no more than $20 billion for servicer incentives when all is said and done - indicating that HAMP will help far fewer distressed homeowners than originally promised.

Orange County, California-based UnitedTech Lender Services, Inc. (UTLS), the holding company to the UTLS family of companies, is providing various solutions to mortgage industry participants through its subsidiaries, UTLS Technology Services and UTLS Consulting Services.

Notice of defaults, which represent the start of the foreclosure process in California, increased by 19.7 percent in February, according to new data released this week by a locally-based company that tracks every foreclosure in the state. The sudden jump comes after four straight months of declines, when default notices fell to their lowest level in a year. The about-face has quickly quelled any ideas that California might be starting to make its way out of a crippling housing crisis.

With the effective date of the administration's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternative (HAFA) program just around the corner, lenders and servicers are preparing for an influx of short sale and deed-in-lieu requests. In an effort to provide industry professionals with the technology they will need to service the hundreds of thousands of loans estimated to be eligible for HAFA, Equator Financial Solutions, a Los Angeles-based software provider of default servicing solutions, is launching a HAFA software solution.