Hardly a week goes by that we are not hearing about some type of fraud, scam, or escrow theft in the real estate and title insurance/settlement services industries. How do we protect ourselves from being a victim of one of these events? There is the old adage that you cannot protect people from themselves and their bad decisions. That is true when anyone of us listens to a “too good to be true” story, or a promised rate of return you would be a fool to pass up.Click to continue

A continuing national housing recovery has seen various housing markets strengthen throughout December, according to a monthly Property Intelligence Report (PIR) from DataQuick. DataQuick’s PIR leverages its national property database and analytics expertise to assess 42 of the largest counties in the United States using valuation trends, REO inventory trends and sales trends metrics. Click to continue

CoreLogic has released its National Foreclosure Report, which provides data on completed U.S. foreclosures and the overall foreclosure inventory. According to CoreLogic, there were 56,000 completed foreclosures in the U.S. in December 2012, down from 71,000 in December 2011, a year-over-year decrease of 21 percent. On a month-over-month basis, completed foreclosures fell from 58,000 in November 2012 to the current 56,000, a decrease of 3 percent.Click to continue

U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD)Secretary Shaun Donovan, who serves as President Obama’s Chairman of the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force, and Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward J. DeMarco have announced that the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac will extend expiring protections against foreclosure actions against homeowners whose properties were damaged or destroyed due to Hurricane Sandy.Click to continue

Kentucky Attorney General Jack Conway announced that his office filed a lawsuit in Franklin Circuit Court against MERSCORP Holdings, Inc., and its wholly-owned subsidiary Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc. (MERS) for violations of Kentucky law. The lawsuit is a result of General Conway's investigation of mortgage foreclosure issues in Kentucky. The suit alleges that MERS violated Kentucky law by not recording mortgage assignments with County Clerks when mortgages were sold or transferred from one bank to another.Click to continue

Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS), a provider of integrated technology, data and analytics to the mortgage and real estate industries, reports the following "first look" at December 2012 month-end mortgage performance statistics derived from its loan-level database representing approximately 70 percent of the overall market.Click to continue

CoreLogic has released new analysis showing approximately 100,000 more borrowers reached a state of positive equity during the third quarter of 2012, adding to the more than 1.3 million borrowers that moved into positive equity through the second quarter of 2012. This brings the total number of borrowers who moved from negative equity to positive equity September YTD to 1.4 million. 10.7 million, or 22 percent, of all residential properties with a mortgage were in negative equity at the end of the third quarter of 2012.Click to continue

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued a set of rules, the 2013 Real Estate Settlement Procedures AClick to continue

RealtyTrac has released its Year-End 2012 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report, which shows a total of 2,304,941 foreclosure filings—default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions—were reported on 1,836,634 U.S. properties in 2012, down three percent from 2011 and down 36 percent from the peak of 2.9 million properties with foreclosure filings in 2010. The report also shows that 1.39 percent of U.S.Click to continue

The November Mortgage Monitor report, released by Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS), shows the national foreclosure inventory dropped to 3.51 percent in November, representing an almost 10 percent decline from September 2012, when newly instituted National Mortgage Settlement requirements began to influence the pace of first-time foreclosure starts. LPS expects foreclosure starts to rebound as mortgage servicers incorporate the new procedural requirements into their operations in the coming months.Click to continue