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Foreclosures have been rising sharply in South Florida since January, with Broward County topping the list with a 50% increase, according to Default Research Inc., a foreclosure research company based in Mt. Pleasant, Pa.Palm Beach ranked second, with a 37% increase in foreclosures since January, and Miami was third, with 30%, the company said. "Investors are shying away from the Eastern coast and focusing on the Gulf coast, which has seen significant decreases in 2006," said Serdar Bankaci, president and chief executive officer of Default Research. The company touts the timeliness of its foreclosure data, which it says arrive two to three weeks ahead of competitors' data. Default Research can be found online at http://www.defaultresearch.com.

Class M-3 of RAMP mortgage asset-backed pass-through certificates, series 2003-RP1, has been downgraded from BB to CCC and assigned a Distressed Recovery rating of DR3 by Fitch Ratings.In addition, the ratings on three other classes in the deal were affirmed. The downgrade reflects a deterioration in the relationship between the bond's credit enhancement and expected losses, Fitch said. Over the past 12 months, losses have exceeded excess spread, resulting in a reduction of the overcollateralization amount, the rating agency said. The collateral in the transaction consists of fixed- and adjustable-rate residential mortgage loans secured by first and second liens.

Colleen Hernandez has been named president and executive director of the Homeownership Preservation Foundation, Minneapolis, effective July 5.Ms. Hernandez was executive director of the Kansas City Neighborhood Alliance for 18 years, and she was most recently the principal of Hernandez Consulting LLC, which specializes in affordable housing and community development. She served on the board of directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City for six years and on the Consumer Advisory Council to the Federal Reserve Board, the Homeownership Preservation Foundation said. The foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to reducing foreclosures and preserving homeownership, can be found online at http://www.hpfonline.org.

Arbor Realty Trust Inc., a real estate investment trust based in Uniondale, N.Y., has announced the completion of the sale of $15 million of trust preferred securities in a private placement.The trust said it will use the proceeds to repay short-term debt and provide capital to fund loan originations. The trust preferred securities have an approximately 30-year term and bear interest at a rate of 7.87% for the first five years and a floating-rate of 2.52% above the three-month London interbank offered rate thereafter. Arbor, which specializes in real-estate-related bridge and mezzanine loans, can be found online at http://www.thearbornet.com.

Classes B-2 and B-3 of Bear Stearns ARM Trust series 2001-4 have been placed under review for possible downgrade by Moody's Investors Service.The rating actions were taken because existing credit enhancement levels "may be low given the current level of foreclosures on the underlying pools," Moody's said. The most junior subordinate class, B-6, is completely written down, leaving the class B-3 certificates protected only by a $486,194 balance from classes B-4 and B-5 as of the April 25 reporting date, the rating agency reported. Moody's can be found on the Web at http://www.moodys.com.

Prepayment rates on 30-year fixed-rate mortgages in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities increased by a constant prepayment rate of 1.2 in May, according to the Bear Stearns Prepayment Commentary.Overall speeds on 30-year Fannie Mae collateral came in at 12.6 CPR for the month, while speeds for comparable Freddie Mac mortgages averaged 11.2 CPR, Bear Stearns senior managing directors V.S. Srinivasan and Dale Westhoff said in the report. "A seasonal increase in housing turnover activity and a two-day increase in the business calendar more than offset the 12-bp increase in mortgage rates," the analysts said. Prepayments on 30-year Ginnie Mae collateral rose from 15.8 CPR to 16.9 CPR. The analysts predicted a "pronounced slowdown" in speeds over the next few months "as the rate of home price appreciation moderates and the full impact of the increase in mortgage rates is factored in." Bear Stearns can be found online at http://www.bearstearns.com.

Freddie Mac's board of directors has set Sept. 8 as the date of the company's annual stockholders' meeting and announced a dividend of $0.47 per share on the corporation's voting common stock for the second quarter, the same as in the first quarter.The board also declared the following preferred stock dividends per share: $0.55 on its 1996 and 1998 variable-rate stock; $0.7675 on its 6.14% stock; $0.72625 on its 1997, 2001, and 2002 5.81% stock; $0.625 on its 5% stock; $0.6375 on its 1998 and 1999 5.1% stock; $0.6625 on its 5.3% stock; $0.72375 on its 5.79% stock; $0.4475 on its 1999 variable-rate stock; $0.49125 on its January 2001 variable-rate stock; $0.63826 on its March 2001 variable-rate stock; $0.48125 on its May 2001 variable-rate stock; $0.75 on its 6% stock; and $0.7125 on its 5.7% stock. The dividends will be payable on June 30 to stockholders of record as of June 12. Freddie Mac can be found online at http://www.freddiemac.com.

Employment in the mortgage industry fell in April for the second month in a row.The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that employment in the mortgage banker/broker sector slipped by 2,500 jobs, from 503,600 in March to 501,100 in April. Meanwhile, the U.S. economy created 75,000 new jobs in May, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.6%. (There is a one-month lag in BLS reporting of mortgage-sector employment data. The May data will not be released until early next month.)The BLS can be found online at http://stats.bls.gov.

Twenty-five subordinate certificates from 12 subprime home equity loan transactions issued by Structured Asset Securities Corp.'s Amortizing Residential Collateral Trusts have been placed under review for possible downgrade by Moody's Investors Service.The affected classes are as follows: series 2001-BC1, class M1 and class M2; series 2001-BC6, class M2; series 2002-BC1, class M2 and class B; series 2002-BC2, class M1, class M2, and class B; series 2002-BC3, class M2 and class B; series 2002-BC4, class M3 and class B1; series 2002-BC5, class M3; series 2002-BC6, class M3 and class B; series 2002-BC7, class B1, class B2, and class B3; series 2002-BC8, class M3, class M4, and class B; series 2002-BC9, class M3, class M4, and class B; and series 2002-BC10, class M3. The rating actions were based on the weaker-than-expected performance of the mortgage pools and the resulting erosion of credit support, Moody's said. The rating agency can be found online at http://www.moodys.com.

The number of rating upgrades in the first quarter for U.S. structured finance transactions was nearly triple that of a year earlier, with commercial mortgage-backed securities leading the way, according to Fitch Ratings.Upgrades totaled 1,203 in the first quarter, compared with 421 in the first quarter of 2005, Fitch says in its latest global update report. The ratio of upgrades to downgrades also improved dramatically, rising from 1.1 to 1 in the first quarter of 2005 to 4.1 to 1. "By far the best-performing U.S. structured finance sector was CMBS, as evidenced by its 28.4:1 upgrade-to-downgrade ratio," the rating agency reported. "A sharp rise in defeasance was largely responsible for 483 upgrades, compared to just 17 downgrades." Residential MBS also turned in a strong rating performance, recording a 3.4 to 1 upgrade-to-downgrade ratio in the first quarter, far ahead of its 0.9 to 1 ratio a year earlier. "Longer term, however, the rate of RMBS upgrades will likely dwindle due to slowing prepayment speeds and subsequently slow build-up of credit enhancement," Fitch predicted. The rating agency can be found online at http://www.fitchratings.com.