RealtyTrac’s CEO James J. Saccacio Receives Distinguished Alumni Award
May 13, 2011, News Release

RealtyTrac® (www.realtytrac.com), the leading online marketplace for foreclosure properties, today announced that RealtyTrac Chief Executive Officer James J. Saccacio will receive the 2011 Distinguished Alumni Award from Southern Methodist University at a luncheon today, Friday, May 13, 2011, in Dallas, Texas.

April Home Sales in Southern California Hit Three-year Low
May 13, 2011, Los Angeles Times

April home sales in Southern California were down 9.2% from a year earlier. The figure, the lowest for April in three years, was 25.4% below the month's average since record-keeping began in 1988, DataQuick of San Diego reported Thursday.

The New Global City
May 13, 2011, Wall Street Journal

This spring, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner paid $100 million for a French chateau-style mansion in Silicon Valley, setting a record for the highest price ever paid for a single-family home in the U.S. In January, Ukraine's Rinat Akhmetov closed on two of London's most expensive apartments ever for a combined $222.5 million. In Paris, a Gulf princess spent $96.9 million last year for a mansion with an inner courtyard, garden and private chapel on the Left Bank.

Mortgages, Foreclosures Top Agenda at BofA Meeting
May 13, 2011, Associated Press

Foreclosures and home mortgage modifications took center stage at Bank of America Corp.'s annual meeting Wednesday.

The People vs. Goldman Sachs
May 11, 2011, Rolling Stone

This is America: Corporate stealing is practically the national pastime, and Goldman Sachs is far from the only company to get away with doing it. But the prominence of this bank and the high-profile nature of its confrontation with a powerful Senate committee makes this a political story as well. If the Justice Department fails to give the American people a chance to judge this case — if Goldman skates without so much as a trial — it will confirm once and for all the embarrassing truth: that the law in America is subjective, and crime is defined not by what you did, but by who you are.

RealtyTrac released its April 2011 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report today, and it shows that foreclosures decreased annually for the seventh straight month in April, which had the lowest foreclosure activity total since December 2007.

RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio believes the decreases are largely due to foreclosure processing delays rather than a recovering housing market.

“This slowdown continues to be largely the result of massive delays in processing foreclosures rather than the result of a housing recovery that is lifting people out of foreclosure," he said. “The first delay occurs between delinquency and foreclosure, when lenders and services are no longer automatically pushing loans that are more than 90 days delinquent into foreclosure but are waiting longer to allow for loan modifications, short sales and possibly other disposition alternatives,” Saccacio continued. “Data from the Mortgage Bankers Association shows that about 3.7 million properties are in this seriously delinquent stage. The second delay occurs after foreclosure has started, when lenders are taking much longer than they were just a few years ago to complete the foreclosure process.”

RealtyTrac Senior Vice President Rick Sharga explains further in this video recapping the April foreclosure report.

Here's a heat map showing the distribution of foreclosure activity by county nationwide.

State Attorneys General in D.C. for Talks on Fund to Aid Homeowners
May 10, 2011, Washington Post

State attorneys general are descending on Washington again this week for negotiations with federal regulators and the nation’s largest mortgage servicers over the purpose of a multibillion-dollar fund aimed at helping troubled borrowers.

Bank of America Billions in Losses at Stake on Moynihan Outlook
May 10, 2011, Bloomberg News

At Bank of America Corp., where the company’s home-price forecasts have proved too good to be true, billions of dollars of new losses are at stake along with the credibility of Chief Executive Officer Brian T. Moynihan.

Mortgage Delinquencies Post Big Drop in March
May 6, 2011, Wall Street Journal

Mortgage delinquencies fell by 12% in March, the biggest monthly drop since the housing bust began, to the lowest level since 2008, according to LPS Applied Analytics.

Bankrupt Bay Area Homeowners Shed Second Mortgages
May 9, 2011, San Jose Mercury News

Stung by the crash of the housing market, some struggling homeowners are using a little known but increasingly popular provision of the bankruptcy code to eliminate second mortgages and avoid foreclosure. Bankruptcy laws prevent homeowners from eliminating the debt of a first mortgage if they plan to stay in their home. But second mortgages are treated differently. They can be declared unsecured debt when there is no equity to cover them, as is the case for millions of houses that are now worth far less than a few years ago.

A question submitted on the RealtyTrac Community forum made me realize that not many people may realize that RealtyTrac subscribers can search foreclosures by property type (i.e. residential, commercial, industrial). The search can be done by general property type such as the ones just mentioned or by very specific property codes. See a list of the codes here: http://www.realtytrac.com/pub/proptypecodes.html.

Here's a screenshot to show how the search by property type looks. Just click the "advanced" link in the main RealtyTrac search bar at the top of most pages on the site. You'll need to be logged in for full access to this advanced search.

Deutsche Bank Sued by City of Los Angeles for Evicting Low-Income Tenants
Bloomberg — May 4, 2011

Deutsche Bank AG (DBK) was sued by the Los Angeles city attorney for allegedly failing to maintain foreclosed properties and illegally evicting low-income tenants.

Bank of America to triple centers to assist troubled homeowners
San Francisco Business Times — May 5, 2011

Bank of America said Thursday that it will triple the number of centers it operates to meet with troubled homeowners to 40 from 12 by early summer.

Landlords Undeterred by Foreclosures, Survey Reveals
DSNews — May 5, 2011

More than 80 percent of independent landlords surveyed said they would rent to someone who lost a home in foreclosure, according to the National Association of Independent Landlords. However, landlords stipulated that applicants must otherwise have good credit.

Bills call for less notice on home foreclosures
Nashville Ledger — May 6, 2011

The Tennessee General Assembly is moving closer toward reducing the number of newspaper notices lenders are required to run before foreclosing on a home.

Governor Signs Foreclosure Protection Law
KITV4 — May 5, 2011

HONOLULU -- Gov. Neil Abercrombie signed into law a measure Thursday that will help homeowners at risk of losing their homes to foreclosure.