J.P. Morgan Chase has been one of the lenders working with homeowners in the Making Home Affordable Program. Over the past months, homeowners have seen an increase in the number of permanent home loan modifications that have been made from Chase, which has helped many to obtain a more affordable home loan payment.

However, there’s still the problem of foreclosures that many homeowners are facing when they are either denied a trial modification or have their modification trial period cancelled. According to the July 2010 Making Home Affordable servicer report, 11,977 foreclosures were begun by Chase, through June 2010. There are also 2,062 completed foreclosures, according to the July report, for homeowners who had their trial modification canceled.

These numbers in foreclosure starts and foreclosures completed for homeowners who had their trial modification canceled were up from the June 2010 report which indicated Chase had started 10,927 foreclosures and completed 1,119 foreclosures through the month of May. Yet, there is also homeowners that were denied a trial modification who also faced foreclosure. The foreclosure starts for homeowners who were denied a trial modification through the Making Home Affordable Program from J.P. Morgan Chase totaled 8,928 while completed foreclosures numbered 1,374.

Full story is available on Red, White, and Blue Press

Ah, to be a Real Housewife of Orange County. While many of her O.C. neighbors are being sucked down the foreclosure drain, Alexis Bellino — she of “The Real Housewives of Orange County” fame — and her husband, Jim, have been spared the pain and humiliation of losing their home in default of their $4.6 million loan. Perhaps there is enough pain and humiliation associated with starring in this show and the forces of karma needed to restore balance to the universe? It certainly isn’t an everyday occurrence that Chase Bank gets to be a shining knight in loan-modification armor.

The Bellinos reportedly were behind $83,000 in payments on their Newport Beach home, according to The Orange County Register. The 4,200-square-foot house was set to be auctioned off on the old courthouse steps earlier this week, but the Bellinos were able to seal a loan modification deal with Chase. The newspaper confirmed the arrangement with Jim Bellino.

Their story appears pretty typical, up to a point.

Full story is available on Housing Watch

Some think foreclosure is black and white.  You either have enough money to pay your mortgage or you don’t and you lose your home.

But sometimes there is a middle ground.

The only problem is those options are often hidden by piles of complicated paperwork.

The workshops set up today are designed to help Hoosiers fill out all those forms so that when you start to talk to your bank you know what to expect, and you have all the answers that they ask for.  Those answers could be “the” answer to saving your home.

“The lenders have a lot of different options,” said Jay Kenworth of the Lt. Governor’s Office.  “They don’t want to see foreclosures either. Nobody does. It doesn’t make anybody any money. So what banks will do is look at your situation and say ok, we see that this is the problem and maybe we can alter the terms of your loan or maybe we can lower the principal or maybe sometimes the best option is to sell your home. ”

Full story is available on wthr.com

Mortgage rates  have continued to remain low throughout the summer months. With the 30 year fixed rate at 4.125% and the 15 year fixed rate at 3.625%, one would expect that potential home borrowers would be waiting in line at banks to secure their mortgage. This is not the case today as mortgage rates are not moving the housing market in the direction that it should be going under normal circumstances.

There are several factors that can be blamed for the continued depressed housing market. Without knowing which way housing prices will go, buyers are not looking at purchasing a home as a way to make money and to secure their financial future. As housing prices continue to fall, it will take many years before a buyer will see any equity in their home. Many buyers are still waiting to see if housing prices continue to drop at which point there may only be foreclosures and short sales available.

Some buyers do not want to deal with the problems with purchasing a foreclosure or a short sale. The time and paperwork involved for these homes is stressful and only the beginning of a long journey. The cost associated with potential repairs and maintenance involved with foreclosures is another drawback. Because of this, buyers, who have the upper hand in this market, are looking to purchase homes currently owned and occupied by sellers at the same prices as those offered for foreclosures and short sales. Sellers, on the other hand, are not willing to reduce their prices to those levels. By doing that, many sellers would have to bring cash to the closing table which many are unwilling or not in the financial position to do. With millions of homes in negative equity, sellers are sitting tight on their homes instead of taking a devastating financial hit.

Full story is available on FreeRateUpdate

CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), a leading provider of consumer, financial and property information and business services, today announced the lending industry’s first short-sale fraud prevention and pricing solution, Short Sale Monitoring Solution™. The new service allows lenders to receive alerts on “risky” pending and closed short sales to minimize unnecessary losses related to fraud and property underpricing, which CoreLogic estimates at $41,500 per transaction. Short Sale Monitoring Solution provides real-time access to lenders’ concurrent transactions on short-sale properties through the CoreLogic Mortgage Fraud Consortium, the largest repository of application and transaction data, representing 65 percent of annual loan applications.

“Short-sale fraud is costing lenders $310 million a year and those losses may increase if lenders cannot proactively identify risks in real time,” stated Tim Grace, senior vice president of Fraud Analytics, CoreLogic. “Prior to our solution, lenders were disadvantaged by not being able to cross reference pending loan applications on the same property. Our Short Sale Monitoring Solution gives lenders unique and immediate pre- and postclosing perspectives on short-sale transactions.”

Full story is available on iStockAnalyst

A little over a month ago I posted some data from RealtyTrac that supposedly painted a picture of what is being foreclosed upon in Chicago. The only problem is that the last graph I posted looked rather suspicious since it indicated that almost all of Chicago’s distressed properties were studios. In fact, someone on Cribchatter challenged the legitimacy of that data and it has been haunting me ever since. Finally I realized that with recent changes to the multiple listing service I could actually produce my own analysis, with one important caveat. While RealtyTrac reports on foreclosure activity I can only analyze what is for sale and what has sold. One might expect that in the long run these converge but there is no guarantee.

So, here is a snapshot of foreclosures and short sales in Chicago for the last 30 days. First, there have been 1418 closings in the last 30 days (not a lot). Of those 39.5% were either short sales or bank sales (a lot). However, compare that to the fact that “only” 16.7% of Chicago homes that are on the market are distressed and that tells you that a disproportionate percentage of the homes sold are distressed. In other words, today’s buyers are bargain shopping. No surprise.

Full story is available on Chicago Now

Worries about the sorry state of the U.S. economy have officials from the Obama administration digging deep into their bag of tricks to stop the skid before it slips into a double-dip recession.

Their latest move was announced Sunday when Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said the White House plans in the next few weeks to set up an emergency loan program for the unemployed and a government mortgage refinancing effort.

Despite all the monetary and fiscal firepower the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Treasury have deployed, economic growth has slowed to an agonizing pace. The slowdown has hit the housing market particularly hard, as evidenced by home sales that dropped to record lows in July.

Full story is available on Money Morning

The U.S. housing sector received some good news Tuesday — home prices in 20 major cities rose a better-than-expected 4.2% in June  on a year-on-year basis, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price survey. Prices also rose a non-seasonally adjusted 1% in June, from May.

But June’s bright spark may represent brief relief for the troubled residential real estate sector — the data probably reflects some effects of the home buyer tax credit, an expired program that benefited residential buyers who signed contracts before the end of April. Meanwhile, reports show July existing-home sales plunged 27.2% and July new-home sales plummeted 12.4%, the latter hitting a 47-year low.

Full story is available on Daily Finance

ousing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said in response to a reporter’s question about a possible tax credit renewal.

Donovan on Sunday fueled speculation the administration might push for an extension when he told CNN it was too early to make a decision about renewing the tax credit. Congress would have to approve any renewal.

Sales of previously owned U.S. homes took a record plunge in July to their slowest pace in 15 years, underlining the housing market’s struggle to find its footing without government aid.

Full story is available on Reuters

Demand for home loan refinancing rose for a fifth straight week, a development that may provide a much-needed jolt to a flailing economy as it could portend an increase in consumer spending.

The Mortgage Bankers Association on Wednesday said its seasonally adjusted index of mortgage applications, which includes both purchase and refinance loans, for the week ended August 27 increased 2.7 percent. The four-week moving average of mortgage applications, which smooths the volatile weekly figures, was up 5.2 percent.

The MBA’s seasonally adjusted index of refinancing applications increased 2.8 percent, reaching the highest level since the week ended May 1, 2009.

Home loan refinancing puts extra cash into consumers’ hands that they can save, use to pay off existing debt or funnel into the economy through extra spending.

“Refinancing activity picked up again last week, reaching new 15-month highs, as borrowers took advantage of even lower mortgage rates,” Michael Fratantoni, MBA’s Vice President of Research and Economics, said in a statement.

Full story is available on Reuters