Foreclosures

The city of Owensboro, Ky., has plowed through a complicated process that led to a mass foreclosure action against 21 problem properties, most of them residential. Now, the city has its sights on another set of similar problem properties for foreclosure.

Local officials could have a new weapon, courtesy of state government, in a drive to thin out empty residences and buildings in St. Joseph, Mo.

A recently launched program in New York state is helping distressed borrowers avoid foreclosure.

The former vice president of Appalachian Community Bank in Ellijay, Ga., has been found guilty of a fraud that helped force the bank to close in March 2010.

Facing the prospect of losing its license in California, Ocwen would be wise to settle its probe by state regulators in a timely manner, observers said. If it doesn't, the mortgage servicer could lose significant revenue and might even face a cash crunch.

Foreclosure filings on U.S. properties fell 18% in 2014 compared to a year earlier, according to RealtyTrac.

While put-backs and litigation risk are widely recognized as factors that have contributed to tight credit conditions, another factor — high servicing costs for nonperforming loans — is being overlooked.

Invitation Homes is sticking to the same large loan model of past single-family rental securitizations in its first deal of 2015.

Blackstone Group is offering the first securities of 2015 tied to rental homes, the start of what Morgan Stanley analysts predict may be a more than doubling of issuance this year in the nascent market for such debt.

The number of homes in some stage of foreclosure dropped 36% in November compared to the previous year, according to a report Wednesday from CoreLogic.

The U.S. Supreme Court gave homeowners more ability to cancel their mortgages if lenders don't provide the required disclosures, in a setback for the banking industry.

Industrywide standards of best practices are a topic that deserves consideration by everyone involved. We should prove that common sense still can prevail.

There remains a clear difference in the housing recovery among home price tiers, according to the November Mortgage Monitor from Black Knight Financial Services.

MGIC Investment Corp. said on Friday that its delinquent inventory dropped slightly in December compared to a month earlier.

The number of homes in negative equity continued to lessen through the end of the third quarter, according to CoreLogic.

American Homes 4 Rent, the largest publicly traded investor in single-family rental homes, has acquired a pool of properties from a subsidiary of Ellington Management Group, in what could be a sign of further consolidation in the industry.

Golden First Mortgage Corp. agreed to a $36 million settlement of claims that the company — which allegedly saw 60% of its government underwritten loans go into default since 2002 — defrauded a federal mortgage program.

Ocwen Financial's settlement with New York regulators could have a negative impact on the cash flows of mortgage bonds heavily exposed to loans serviced by Ocwen in that state, according to Moody's Investors Service.

Renters paid $441 billion for apartments and houses this year, a $20.6 billion increase, as fewer Americans owned their homes and landlords with tight inventories raised leasing charges.

Borrowers who are being sued by lenders over the money owed on foreclosed mortgages are making novel use of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act. They argue that they cannot be sued if they live in a state different from the one where the property is located.