Foreclosures

Two more real estate investors have admitted conspiring to rig bids at foreclosure auctions, bringing to nine the total who say they cheated at the public auctions held at South Mississippi courthouses.

That old fixer-upper house down the block may have seen better days, but in an environment where new-home prices are on the rise, older homes remain in demand in many markets.

October's loan delinquencies, especially those in serious delinquency, got much healthier after improving from the fallout of the last two hurricane seasons, according to Black Knight.

A National Fair Housing Alliance-led group plans to amend and refile a recently dismissed complaint against Deutsche Bank, Ocwen Financial Corp. and Altisource Portfolio Solutions alleging racial discrimination in property preservation.

Over the last 20 years, at least 145,000 Detroit properties have been put up for sale in the annual Wayne County Tax Auction, and, of that number, an estimated 50,000 properties were occupied at the time of foreclosure.

Wells Fargo will lay off 1,000 workers primarily from its mortgage unit in the first major round of a previously announced plan to cut the bank's workforce by as much as 10% over the next three years.

The 48,390 homes dubbed at extreme or high risk from the California wildfires burning through the state could cost $18 billion in reconstruction, according to a CoreLogic analysis.

The scheme's perpetrators were based in Irvine, Calif., the FTC said in a complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland.

The bank recently notified an upstate New York man that he was wrongly denied a mortgage modification, and enclosed a $25,000 check. But details of what went wrong have been hard to come by.

The mortgage delinquency rate dipped to a 12-year low, but overvalued housing markets and eventual reversal in the unemployment rate present risk for future delinquencies, according to CoreLogic.

Three people who fraudulently obtained $9.3 million in mortgage loans involving homes in Modesto, Patterson and Lathrop, Calif., have received multiyear federal prison sentences.

Mortgage delinquencies inched up, in part from natural disasters hindering homeowner performance, but a stronger economy is still keeping defaults low, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Wells Fargo said Tuesday that an internal error that affected customers requesting mortgage modifications to remain in their homes impacted hundreds more people than the bank initially thought.

Excellent credit quality and strong performance of post-housing-crisis originations resulted in a steep decline in foreclosure starts in September, according to Black Knight.

Housing policies are helping the number of vacant foreclosure homes drop, which could also mean homebuyers have been taking advantage of these properties as inventory continues to be constrained, according to Attom Data Solutions.

After falling to its lowest level in over 12 years, servicers expected September's surge in delinquencies following the damage of Hurricane Florence, according to Black Knight.

The Federal Housing Administration is making it easier for reverse mortgage servicers to submit insurance claims by expanding the types of supporting documentation it will accept on defaulted loans.

Natural disasters are now the leading driver of lenders' foreclosure risk, with last year's hurricanes causing a rise in third-quarter filings in affected markets, according to Attom Data Solutions.

The mortgage delinquency rate fell to a 12-year low, with declines expected to continue as the unemployment rate stays down, according to CoreLogic.

Destruction from Michael's storm surge and flooding has potential to affect 57,000 homes, with a worst-case total of $13.4 billion in reconstruction cost value, according to CoreLogic's latest estimates.