From Lily Leung, the new real estate reporter for the Union-Tribune - we're rooting for you Lily! Fewer San Diego homeowners defaulted on their mortgages in February, and foreclosures have decreased year-over-year for the fifth consecutive time. Could this signal...
From Alejandro Laso at the latimes.com: Major banks may be forced to let severely delinquent homeowners sell their houses for less than the loan amounts owed as part of a broad settlement of federal and state investigations into botched foreclosure paperwork,...
From HW: Four Republican attorneys general participating in the investigation into mortgage servicing practices wrote a letter to Iowa AG Tom Miller stating that the proposed settlement is too strict. Florida AG Pam Bondi, Texas AG Greg Abbott, Virginia AG Kenneth...
From Businessweek.com: More than one in five borrowers in the U.S. are underwater; collectively the shortfall is about $751 billion. Nationally, homeowners whose mortgages have been modified without a principal reduction are up to twice as likely to re-default as...
From sddt.com (SDCo. homes that have no mortgage = 20%): Nearly one in three mortgage holders in San Diego owe more than the value of their home, according to a CoreLogic report. Of residential properties with a mortgage in San Diego County, 29.2 percent, or 173,139,...
From HW: Servicers are moving toward a proactive approach in pursuing short sales as an alternative to foreclosure, servicers on a Mortgage Bankers Association panel said Wednesday. A component and specialty servicer, meanwhile, predicted that short sales could...
From Diana at cnbc.com: (S)everal speakers at the forum said several scary things about housing and foreclosures. Mark Zandi of Moody's Economy.com is looking for a hybrid version of Fannie and Freddie, or a mortgage market more privatized but with government backing....
Hat tip to KK for sending this along, from the Huffington Post - a story that follows people through the loan-mod maze, and highlights how the servicers are making the walk-away problem worse: While walking away is a frightening and dangerous step into the unknown,...
Hat tip to Stormin Norm for sending this CBS video along - here is the printed version, which includes a bump in drama. In the video the homeowner says that his La Jolla home is worth $500,000 to $600,000 less, and in the printed version they call it "6 to $700,000...
From Diana Olick at cnbc.com: I have argued many times that just because a loan is underwater (value of loan is higher than value of home) it doesn't necessarily mean that the borrower will stop making timely payments. Yes, the incentive to abandon the home is there,...
