A $25 billion foreclosure settlement reached between the government and the big banks has many wondering who will win and who will lose among the different parties involved.  Although the settlement is complicated and will take years to work out, the basic framework will please some and annoy others. Here are some basic questions and answers about the settlement, which according [...]

The latest FHA Single-Family Outlook report from the FHA shows that serious delinquencies continue to plague the FHA. The number of seriously delinquent FHA loans increased by 18.9% from last year to a record number of 711,082 mortgage loans.  FHA loans classified as seriously delinquent amount to 9.6% of all FHA insured mortgages. A seriously delinquent loan is defined by the [...]

LPS Mortgage Monitor has come out with a comprehensive series of charts including the current level of foreclosures, delinquencies by year of origination, length of time homeowners have not made a payment in judicial states, states with largest drops in non-current mortgages and foreclosure rates in judicial vs non judicial states. The states with the biggest declines in non current [...]

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke must be talking to himself by now.  Despite driving interest rates to zero and the expenditure of trillions of dollars to prop up the housing market, home prices declined again in 2011. The most recent data on foreclosure activity makes it clear that the Fed’s efforts to date have accomplished next to nothing. The foreclosure statistics for 2011 from [...]

Welcome to Banking Update, a roundup of articles and news from around the Internet.  The government keeps trying new foreclosure programs despite the failure of previous ones, homeowners past due by more than 60 days are unlikely to recover, home prices continue to drop, mortgage fraud continues and almost half of all home purchases are for cash.  On to the links: Foreclosure [...]

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) painted a gloomy picture for the housing markets with its release of the OCC Mortgage Metrics Report for the third quarter of 2011.  Mortgage delinquencies remain at high levels and foreclosures increased by double digits. The OCC report covers mortgages serviced by federal savings associations and large national banks which include [...]

The latest financial results from the banking industry point to a resolution of the mortgage crisis that nearly resulted in the nationalization of the country’s biggest banks three years ago. In a dramatic turnaround the country’s largest banks have repaid government loans, often with large profits to the government.  Billions of dollars in new capital raised via stock [...]

The recent Massachusetts Supreme Court ruling against Wells Fargo and U.S. Bancorp is likely to bring foreclosures to a crawl, resulting in a further destabilizing of housing markets.  The Court ruling is a major win for debtors and a severe blow for creditors trying to clear a backlog of millions of defaulted mortgages. The Massachusetts Court set aside two foreclosure sales, [...]

October 13, 2010 – Can the economy improve without a recovery in real estate values?  This question was addressed today by FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair, in a speech to the Urban Land Institute in Washington, D.C.   Despite optimistic forecasts by various analysts, Ms. Bair cited the daunting challenges that must be overcome in order to restore stability to the real estate [...]

September 15, 2010 – Defaulted mortgage loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the peak years of the mortgage boom are now resulting in billion dollar losses for some of the largest banks in the country. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, now under the conservatorship of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), are seeking to limit their losses on defaulted mortgages by [...]