The state attorneys general mortgage settlement received almost immediate criticism from homeowner and housing advocates alike after its Feb. 9 announcement, with common complaints being the limited reach of the settlement and the numerous consumer groups that were either

Short sales have rightfully earned a reputation of being slow, plodding and, in some occasions, maddening, but a new bill introduced in the Senate yesterday seeks to cut through all the red tape and simplify the process. Brought before

Throughout 2011, housing inventory had been on a steady decline, a development that should be welcome, given the constant analyses on the excess housing supply as a result of boom-era overbuilding. As details emerge over the nature of those

The White House and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) are hard at work on a distressed housing program that would convert REO properties into investor-managed rental homes, and though the program seems to be going well in its initial

The White House’s REO conversion plan got a huge endorsement yesterday from analysts at Morgan Stanley, who predicted that the program could create more than one million new jobs. According to a HousingWire summary of the analysts’ findings, the

How affordable have homes become? How did residential construction begin the year? And how will foreclosures react to the mortgage settlement? We survey the week’s top news in real estate (Feb. 13 to Feb. 17) by the

Hope Now recently released its State Loss Mitigation Data for December 2011, a wide-ranging report that studies the various components of the U.S. first-lien residential mortgage workout, such as delinquencies, foreclosure starts, completed foreclosure sales, loan modifications, and other

The $26 billion mortgage settlement, despite its hefty price tag and extensive (if not laborious) composition, received its fair share of criticisms almost immediately after being issued, with housing advocates and community organizers railing against the settlement’s perceived shortcomings.

Mortgage delinquency rates in the fourth quarter showed improvement in the latest Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) National Delinquency Survey, with a number of the nation’s home loan market offerings reporting some of the healthiest data in years. Jay Brinkmann, MBA’s chief

The U.S. foreclosure markets spent much of 2011 on hiatus, cowering in the corner while banks handled the robo signing controversy and settled the substantial lawsuits that resulted from the scandal’s numerous foreclosure-related mishaps. 2012 is a new year, though,

Residential housing construction started off 2012 on good footing, building on December’s gains and rising in nearly every relevant area, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Housing starts

President Obama released his 2013 Budget proposal only this week, but housing advocates are already coming out against the measure, citing reductions in services and revenue models that they claim are essential for housing’s future. On the association side,

In an effort to improve is relations with the housing industry and fellow MLS providers, popular website Zillow has hired real estate veteran Bob Bemis as the company’s vice president of partner relations. Bringing 25 years of experience with

Home builder confidence in the single-family home market rose for the the fifth consecutive month in February, according to the latest NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI), reaching its highest level since 2008. Barry Rutenberg, the NAHB chairman and a home builder from Gainesville,

There are 1,325,334 foreclosed homes on RealtyTrac right now, and through December 2011, one in every 634 housing units received a foreclosure filing. Though some banks have only added to their foreclosure proceedings – and as we wrote yesterday, there could

We’ve been covering the state attorneys general mortgage settlement for the last couple of days, and analysts have uncovered an interesting nugget of information that spells good news for the Federal Housing Administration (FHA). The finances of the FHA