U.S. Home Prices Rise, Lifted by Spring Buyers
Associated Press — June 28, 2011

Home prices in major United States cities have risen for the first time in eight months, lifted by an annual flurry of spring buyers.

Short sales, foreclosures taint Myrtle Beach area real estate market
TheSunNews.com — June 28, 2011

The Grand Strand real estate market remains in a precarious position as sales waver and prices continue to drop, according to data released Monday.

New Law Protects Nevadans in Foreclosure from Debt Collectors
Foxreno.com — June 27, 2011

LAS VEGAS, Nev. - Plenty of Nevadans are in trouble on their mortgages because they took out second mortgages, and real estate tracking companies say more than 60,000 Nevada homes were in foreclosure as of May. However, a new law will soon protect Nevadans who lose their homes from being hounded by creditors years after the fact.

For Some State Marshals, Foreclosure Lawsuits Continue To Bring In Big Money
Hartford Courant — June 26, 2011

A small number of state marshals who deliver foreclosure lawsuits continue to dominate the list of the state's highest-paid process servers, even as banks are filing fewer suits against delinquent homeowners. And at the top of the list once again is State Marshal John T. Fiorillo, whose control of the foreclosure-serving business led to a crackdown two years ago by the attorney general's office.

Florida Court Denies ACLU's 'Foreclosure Docket' Petition
DSNews — June 27, 2011

Florida’s Second District Court of Appeal has denied a petition brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) alleging that the state’s special “mass foreclosure docket” court system doesn’t allow homeowners an opportunity to defend their homes against foreclosure.

U.S. Economy: Consumer Confidence Falls to Seven-Month Low
Bloomberg — June 28, 2011

Consumer confidence dropped to a seven-month low in June as Americans grew concerned about the outlook for jobs and wages.

Foreclosed Homes Wait In 'Shadows' To Go On Sale
June 24, 2011, NPR

The housing market is still languishing this summer, leading some economists to believe prices won't begin to recover until 2014. Even Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernake says the market may be worse than most people thought.

Washington Whiffs at U.S. Foreclosure Mess
June 21, 2011, Bloomberg

There is little doubt that the U.S. housing market is hurting; the latest S&P Case-Shiller index shows residential values declined 4.2 percent in the first quarter compared with the previous three months. The market has struggled, partly because federal policy has wandered all over the proverbial lot. Congress should create a clear and effective strategy for supporting mortgages or, given the remote odds of that happening, let the market stabilize on its own.

Counties Sue Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Over Taxes
June 23, 2011, The Detroit News

Government-backed mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the targets of lawsuits from two county governments claiming they owe millions of dollars in taxes. Oakland and Ingham counties have filed suit seeking to recoup taxes the lenders allegedly failed to pay on property taxes. Oakland County Treasurer Andy Meisner claimed the companies played a key role in the foreclosure crisis and are skirting taxes that could go to public schools.

How to Fix the Dire Housing Numbers
June 21, 2011, TIME

Time for more housing stimulus. The question is how. Here are three things the government could do to boost the housing market:

Mortgage Poll: Are Strategic Defaults Ethical?
June 23, 2011, Reuters

I know a guy — let’s call him Fred — who has a plan for walking away from his home and the $400,000 mortgage on it. Fred lives in Phoenix, one of those particularly hard hit real estate markets in a state that prohibits banks from coming after borrowers for additional money once a home has gone into foreclosure. The home he bought for more than $400,000 is now worth about $225,000, by his estimates. He’s saved up quite a bit of money and can keep making the payments. But he’s nearing retirement, and figures that, the way he’s going, he’ll never have home equity.

Home Sales: Distressing Gap
June 23, 2011, Calculated Risk

The following graph shows existing home sales (left axis) and new home sales (right axis) through May. This graph starts in 1994, but the relationship has been fairly steady back to the '60s. Then along came the housing bubble and bust, and the "distressing gap" appeared due mostly to distressed sales.

Banks Can Predict Strategic Defaulters
June 23, 2011, Orlando Sentinel

People who can afford to pay their mortgages but choose to stop because their homes are no longer worth what they paid make up a big piece of the foreclosure crisis. Now, those homeowners are the target of a cottage industry among credit reporting companies that have crafted formulas to find them and rat them out to their banks — even before they miss their first payments.

New Homes Sales Decreased in May
June 23, 2011, Bloomberg

Purchases of new U.S. houses fell in May for the first time in three months, showing the industry is struggling to gain momentum. Sales dropped 2.1 percent to a 319,000 annual pace last month, according to a report today by the Commerce Department. The median estimate in a Bloomberg News survey of economists called for sales at a 310,000 rate. The median price of new homes sold dropped from a year earlier.

Are Homeowners Fixing Their Balance Sheets?
June 22, 2011, Wall Street Journal

Credit rating agencies S&P and Experian have a report out that suggests that slowly but surely, the rate of mortgage default among U.S. homeowners is going down. The latest numbers, from May, show that the agencies’ indexes tracking defaults on first and second mortgages both fell nearly a tenth of a percentage point, to 2.09% and 1.42%, respectively, from the previous month. A year ago, both measures were much higher, at 3.45% and 2.41%, respectively for first and second mortgages.

Mortgage-Skippers May Have 2nd Home Lined Up
June 22, 2011, Reuters

So-called strategic defaulters who voluntarily stop making their mortgage payments are very savvy financially and sometimes line up their next home and loan before they walk, according to a new study.

Bank of America Sued by Michigan Official for Foreclosure-Sales Taxes
June 22, 2011, Bloomberg

Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co. and mortgage servicers were sued by a Michigan county official who claimed they failed to pay millions of dollars in transfer taxes on foreclosure sales.  The banks and other defendants were part of an effort to “inappropriately” claim state and county tax exemptions on “improperly filed deeds,” Curtis Hertel Jr., Ingham County register of deeds, said today in a lawsuit in state court in Lansing, the capital city.

Maybe it does make sense to strategically default, at least if you live in California.

If you're a California homeowner who stopped making your mortgage payments in the last few years, you could have "saved" $80,000 on average in housing costs, according to an analysis of Notices of Default that were entered into the RealtyTrac database in May 2011.

You could use those savings for rent once the bank finally kicks you out, or possibly for a down payment on your next house when the delinquency or foreclosure has faded on your credit history. While you wait, that $80,000 could be earning you a minimum of $800 in interest each year with a basic savings account from somewhere like ING Direct. If you had put that $80,000 in Apple stock a year ago, it would be up to $96,000 today.

The analysis of California NODs was run after RealtyTrac released its May 2011 U.S. Foreclosure Market Report last week, showing that foreclosure activity dropped on an annual basis for the eighth consecutive month to just under 215,000 properties receiving a foreclosure filing during the month. The last time we saw 215,000 properties receiving foreclosure filings nationwide was in December 2007.

We believe the decreases of the last eight months are being artificially caused by foreclosure processing delays rather than a market recovery lifting homeowners out of distress and foreclosure. We can demonstrate that in part with our new Foreclosure Life Cycle report, which calculates the average time it takes to foreclose in each state. That reports shows that U.S. properties foreclosed on during the first quarter of 2011 took an average of 400 days to foreclose, compared to 340 days for properties foreclosed on during the first quarter of 2010 and 151 days for properties foreclosed on during the first quarter of 2007.

But in addition to the delays within the foreclosure process, we also believe delays before the foreclosure process even starts are making the monthly foreclosure activity numbers lower than they would be under normal circumstances. There is anecdotal evidence to support this (seems like everyone has a story of someone they know who hasn't made a mortgage payment in two years but still hasn't been foreclosed on), but now we have some solid data to back up the anecdotes. The average default amount of nearly $80,000 in May 2011 is up more than six fold from the average default amount of nearly $13,000 in December 2007, the last time we saw foreclosure activity levels as low as they were in May. The average default amount as a percentage of average loan amount is up more than 350 percent during the same time period.

Granted, this data is preliminary, and it's not clear whether we'll be able to run this for every state, but it's safe to say that homeowners in California who entered foreclosure in May were in much deeper delinquency than California homeowners who entered foreclosure back when the housing bubble was just beginning to burst. And this is one trend that's probably not just a California fad.

Backlog of Cases Gives a Reprieve on Foreclosures
June 19, 2011, New York Times

Millions of homeowners in distress are getting some unexpected breathing room — lots of it in some places. In New York State, it would take lenders 62 years at their current pace, the longest time frame in the nation, to repossess the 213,000 houses now in severe default or foreclosure, according to calculations by LPS Applied Analytics, a prominent real estate data firm.

‘Zombie Notes' Live to Haunt Deed Transfers
June 18, 2011, News-Press.com

David Cruz Jr. got what he believed was a great offer in a foreclosure lawsuit filed against him by giant mortgage lender Fannie Mae. If Cruz deeded the modest Fort Myers investment house back to Fannie Mae, the government-backed company would release him from the loan's $123,750 note: the obligation underlying his mortgage. He deeded the house back to Fannie Mae, but court records show he didn't get what he bargained for.

Who Is James Johnson?
June 18, 2011, New York Times

Most political scandals involve people who are not really enmeshed in the Washington establishment — people like Representative Anthony Weiner or Representative William Jefferson. Most scandals involve spectacularly bad behavior — like posting pictures of your private parts on the Web or hiding $90,000 in cash in your freezer. But the most devastating scandal in recent history involved dozens of the most respected members of the Washington establishment. Their behavior was not out of the ordinary by any means.

How the Mortgage Industry Bullies Lawyers Who Sue Them
June 16, 2011, Naked Capitalism

One of the striking things, as the mortgage crisis has ground on, is how persistent and to some degree effective the industry incumbents have been in influencing news stories. One can argue they’ve been more successful than the TBTF banks, perhaps because if you can tank the global economy, keep your job, and still continue to pay yourself egregious bonuses, you don’t need to stoop to throttling every bit of negative coverage.

Underwater Homeowners Walk Away To Stay Afloat
June 16, 2011, CBS News

No state is hit harder by the house crisis than Florida. Of 4.3 million mortgages here, 780,000 are in default; one in four of those are so-called "strategic defaults" - people choosing to walk away.