The national negative equity rate fell in the first quarter, to 25.4 percent of all homeowners with a mortgage, according to the first quarter Zillow Negative Equity Report. But another 18.2 percent of homeowners with mortgages, while not technically underwater, likely do not have enough equity to afford to move. Slightly more than 13 million homeowners with a mortgage were in negative equity, or underwater, at the end of the first quarter, owing more on their mortgage than their home is worth.Click to continue

An estimated 39,051 new and resale houses and condos sold statewide in California in April. That was up 3.4 percent from 37,764 in March, and up 2.1 percent from 38,241 sales in April 2012, according to San Diego-based DataQuick. Last month's sales count was the strongest for an April since 48,894 homes were sold in April 2006. California April sales have varied from a low of 27,625 in 1995 to a high of 71,638 in 2004. Last month's sales were 11.1 percent below the average of 43,920 sales for all the months of April since 1988, when DataQuick's statistics begin.Click to continue

Lender Processing Services  Inc. (LPS) has reported the following "first look" at March 2013 month-end mortgage performance statistics derived from its loan-level database representing approximately 70 percent of the overall market. The total U.S. loan delinquency rate (loans 30 or more days past due, but not in foreclosure) sttod at 6.59 percent, while the month-over-month change in delinquency rate was -3.13 percent. Year-over-year, the change in delinquency rate was -3.03 percent and the total U.S. foreclosure presale inventory rate hit 3.37 percent.Click to continue

California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris has announced California’s National Mortgage Settlement Grant Program has awarded $9.4 million to 21 organizations in order to assist Californians affected by the state’s foreclosure crisis. The grants will benefit many of the state’s neediest homeowners and families by providing or expanding access to free legal assistance and representation, foreclosure intervention aid, homeowner education and financial literacy clinics, blight remediation services, fraud prevention education and employment support services.Click to continue

Existing-home sales eased in March from inventory constraints, which continued to pressure home prices, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, declined 0.6 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.92 million in March from a downwardly revised 4.95 million in February, but remain 10.3 percent higher than the 4.46 million-unit pace in March 2012. Sales have been above year-ago levels for 21 consecutive months, while prices show Click to continue

The FINRA Investor Education Foundation has released a new study revealing that households without emergency savings are more likely to experience mortgage payment problems when faced with an income shock. Households without emergency savings, or rainy day funds, were three times more likely than households with emergency savings to make a late mortgage payment—and almost twice as likely to be involved in a foreclosure. These differences exist even after controlling for other factors that can impact mortgage payment behavior—like income, education and geographic region.Click to continue

The system used by the American credit reporting industry to report the history of consumer payments to creditors to the national credit repositories has a serious flaw, according to some members of the mortgage industry. This flaw is the lack of a specific code for short sale mortgage transactions. With the current mortgage climate of millions of short sale consumers needing properly documented accounts of their previous mortgage problem so they can re-enter the housing market, this problem is reaching epidemic proportions in some of the hardest hit regions of the country.Click to continue

U.S. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has urged the U.S. Attorney General to investigate allegations that a mortgage servicing firm is overcharging struggling homeowners on default and foreclosure fees. “Not only is the thought of making it harder for struggling homeowners to reinstate their loans appalling, but charging for fees already being paid by a government-backed entity such as Fannie Mae is illegal under the False Claims Act,” Sen.Click to continue

The U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury have released the February edition of the Obama Administration's Housing Scorecard—a comprehensive report on the nation’s housing market. Data continue to show important progress across many key indicators—as home prices ended the year with strong gains and purchases of new homes and sales of existing homes were also strong—although officials caution that the overall recovery remains fragile.Click to continue

RealtyTrac has released its U.S. Foreclosure Market Report for January 2013, which shows foreclosure filings—default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions—were reported on 150,864 U.S. properties in January, a decrease of seven percent from the previous month and down 28 percent from January 2012. The report also shows one in every 869 U.S. housing units with a foreclosure filing during the month.Click to continue