Foreclosure

HOPE NOW announced this week that 270,000 homeowner solutions were completed in April. This is the largest number of workouts in any month since HOPE NOW began to compile data. Last month, HOPE NOW members and the mortgage lending industry modified 127,000 mortgages and completed 143,000 repayment plans.

Foreclosures and mortgage delinquencies are still mounting and will continue to rise until the first quarter of 2011, driven primarily by increasing job losses, according to a new report issued by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) on Thursday.

Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) investors led an increase in mortgage-related lawsuits during the first quarter of 2009, according to a mortgage litigation report issued through PRNewswire on Tuesday.

Lender Processing Services, Inc. (LPS), a Florida-based provider of mortgage technology and services, released its May 2009 LPS Mortgage Monitor on Tuesday, which provides market performance indicators based on mortgage data collected through April of this year.

Denver, Colorado-based Integrated Asset Services, LLC (IAS), a provider of mortgage default management services and residential collateral valuation, has added a distressed appraisal feature to its iValue suite of automated valuation products.

ForeclosureRadar, a Web site company that tracks every California foreclosure and provides daily auction updates, has issued its monthly California Foreclosure Report for April 2009. In a reversal from the prior month, the company said, the Golden State’s foreclosure notices dropped while foreclosure sales and distressed property purchases by investors rose.

Massachusetts foreclosures dropped dramatically in April from a year ago and were also lower than March, according to a report released Thursday by the Boston-based real estate research firm The Warren Group.

President Barack Obama signed two housing bills into law on Wednesday afternoon – one that provides additional foreclosure relief and a second that targets mortgage fraud and other criminal activity related to federal assistance programs.

The Treasury announced new initiatives under the administration’s Making Home Affordable program late last week to provide additional options for homeowners facing foreclosure. The first of the two new program components is intended to help borrowers obtain modifications in those markets experiencing severe home price declines.

One in every 374 housing units in the United States received a foreclosure filing in April, according to RealtyTrac’s Foreclosure Market Report released last week. April’s national foreclosure rate was the highest posted since RealtyTrac began issuing its report in January 2005.