We have all heard complaints concerning appraised values being lower than selling prices in today’s recessionary environment. The buyer wants to buy a property and the lender wants to make a loan, but the appraisal stands in the way. There are a lot of possible reasons for this, and not all situations are the same.Read more

HOPE NOW, the private sector alliance of mortgage servicers, investors, mortgage insurers and non-profit counselors has announced that its January 2010 data estimates 99,499 homeowners received proprietary loan modifications for the month. Combined with the United States Treasury’s recently released Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) data that showed 50,364 HAMP modifications for January, the total number of loan modifications is almost 150,000 for the month.Read more

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) has released its Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending March 12, 2010. The Market Composite Index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 1.9 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier. On an unadjusted basis, the Index decreased 1.7 percent compared with the previous week.Read more

The February 2010 Mortgage Monitor report, released by Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS), a provider of mortgage performance data and analytics, shows that while delinquency rates in the U.S. have risen to historic highs, the pace of deterioration has slowed. However, the nation's housing market remains far from a full recovery.Read more

Wells Fargo & Company is reporting that as of Feb. 28, the company had 505,832 active trial and completed modifications through its own modification programs and the federal Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). More than 365,000 of those were non-HAMP active trials in place as of the end of February 2010 and modifications completed since the beginning of 2009. Wells Fargo had 139,065 HAMP active trial and completed modifications in place as of Feb. 28, including 24,975 permanent modifications and 7,533 permanent modifications pending completion.Read more

The U.S. Department of the Treasury and the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) have released February data for the Administration's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP). As of the end of the month, more than one million borrowers were receiving a median savings of $500 each month, a 36 percent median monthly payment decrease. Permanent modifications have been granted to 170,000 homeowners and an additional 91,800 permanent modifications have been approved by servicers and are pending only borrower acceptance.

Highlights of the report include:Read more

Bank of America has announced that it has completed nearly 21,000 mortgage modifications under the federal government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), according to the bank's latest monthly progress report to the U.S. Department of Treasury.Read more

“Friends, Americans, mortgage professionals, lend me your ears … I come to bury InterBay, not to praise them. The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones, so let it be with InterBay … we have been told that InterBay was ambitious: If it were so, it was a grievous fault …”Read more

RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties, has released its February 2010 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows foreclosure filings—default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions—were reported on 308,524 U.S. properties during the month, a decrease of two percent from the previous month but still six percent above the level reported in February 2009. The report also shows one in every 418 U.S. housing units received a foreclosure filing in February.Read more

Rising vacancies and falling rents are impacting all sectors of commercial real estate. Landlords are focusing on tenant retention and negotiating lease extensions at low rents with favorable allowances to sustain revenues. The Beige Book Jan. 13, 2010 Summary indicated that while economic activity remains at a low level, conditions have improved modestly further, and those improvements are broader geographically than in the last report. Commercial real estate markets deteriorated in most districts based on information collected on or before Jan. 5, 2009.Read more