Servicing

Payments to Philadelphia's city treasury and utilities, from mortgage foreclosures and delinquent tax, gas and water bills, surged to $58.3 million last year, a 40% jump from $34.4 million in 2013.

Regulatory attention is supposed to be laser-focused on servicers right now, especially when it comes to how consistent they are in applying workouts. So regulators should be looking closely at whether loans have forbearance.

The government has added further protections to reverse mortgage borrowers' spouses who are not named in the loan agreement, but placed conditions under which they are ineligible for older protections.

Before the Dodd Frank Act went into effect in 2010, the residential mortgage market was in an entirely different state — particularly in regards to servicing. Several large servicers dominated the market, but ultimately shed most of their servicing assets, creating a substantially large segment of midsize servicers.

The city of St. Paul, Minn., has reached a settlement with two landlords in a long-running federal lawsuit in which the city is accused of hurting minority tenants by aggressively enforcing its building codes, thereby reducing the supply of affordable housing.

More than 300,000 South Floridians who lost their homes during the housing bust could be eligible to own again over the next eight years.

Homeowners associations seeking unpaid dues are seizing on a court decision allowing them to foreclose on properties ahead of banks, and the FHFA is litigating to defend Fannie and Freddie mortgages. Private lenders, meanwhile, are trying to keep the problem from spreading to more states.

Almost 80% of the metro Milwaukee area's most-active real estate markets saw an increase in the average home price in 2014, and real estate analysts expect the trend to continue this year.

Mobile boards hung with candy-colored pages announcing the day's foreclosure hearings still stand sentry on the fourth floor of the Palm Beach County, Fla., courthouse — makeshift organizers erected during the unbridled early days of the housing crisis.

Progress Residential priced its second securitization of single-family rental properties.