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ILYCE GLINK / MONEYWATCH / “Starting this month, some lenders are offering certain homeowners loan modifications — without even being asked. Under a new plan created by the Federal Housing and Finance Administration, mortgage servicers must offer homeowners who are three to 24 months behind on their payments a plan to help them avoid foreclosure. The StreamlinedRead more

Josh Salman | Herald Tribune | “Lenders completed fewer foreclosures nationwide in May, but the rate of defaults continue to top recent years and the amount of distressed residences remains dangerously high, a new report shows. Mortgage bankers repossessed 52,000 delinquent U.S. homes in May, a 3.5 percent increase from April but down 27 percent fromRead more

TheRealDeal.com | “Tens of thousands of Florida homeowners have abandoned properties threatened by foreclosure, a dark spot in the Sunshine State’s otherwise brightening real estate market, the Palm Beach Post reported. About 55,000 Florida homes with defaulted mortgages are deserted, nearly one third of the national total and more than triple second-place Illinois, which hasRead more

Cameron Davis | ThinkProgress | “The number of completed foreclosures in May was down 27 percent, to 50,000, compared to May of last year, analytics firm Core Logic reported Tuesday. One million homes remain in some stage of foreclosure, although that figure is down 29 percent from a year earlier. But while foreclosure rates are downRead more

Heather Perlberg & John Gittelsohn | “Jonathan Gray, global head of real estate at Blackstone Group LP, talks about Blackstone’s investment in residential real estate and the outlook for the U.S. housing and commercial property market. He speaks with Erik Schatzker and Deirdre Bolton on Bloomberg Television’s “Market Makers.” (Source: Bloomberg) The firm, which already ownsRead more

Al Sunshine | Checks earmarked for thousands of Florida foreclosure victims are finally in the process of being sent out and hundreds of millions of additional dollars more are being earmarked for new housing programs statewide. Yet there is a growing debate about where most of the money is going and if foreclosure victims are reallyRead more

BY: ESTHER CHO | “As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue their efforts to prevent millions of foreclosures, delinquency rates are also declining, with 60-plus delinquencies down to the lowest level since the first quarter of 2009, according to a report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).    So far, efforts from the GSEs have led to nearly 2.8 millionRead more

Huffington Post | “My father arrived in this country from Europe in the late 1940s with a love of all things American but was especially fond of the post-war boom in emerging technology. To satisfy this hunger, he bought himself a new-fangled Webcor reel-to-reel tape recorder replete with a throbbing green “magic eye” (to monitorRead more

TampaBay Newspapers | CLEARWATER – “One judge’s caseload will be distributed to other Civil Division judges so that he can work fulltime on clearing the more than 16,000 foreclosure cases that are backlogged in Pinellas County. Effective Sept. 1, Circuit Judge Thomas M. Minkoff’s court dockets and calendars will be filled with foreclosure cases that wereRead more

winknews.com | “RealtyTrac® (www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for real estate data, today released a report showing that as of June owners had vacated 167,680 foreclosure properties nationwide, representing 20 percent of all U.S. properties in the foreclosure process. These owner-vacated foreclosures are in addition to 544,274 bank-owned homes nationwide that have been foreclosed onRead more