Foreclosure | featured news

The number of homes entering the first stage of foreclosure fell in the fourth quarter compared with the previous quarter, MDA DataQuick says -- a sign that banks are working with delinquent borrowers.

Fewer Californians entered foreclosure during the last three months of the year as bailed-out banks appeared to step up their work with delinquent borrowers, according to data released this morning, although the number of homes taken back by banks rose slightly.

Serious delinquencies among U.S. prime mortgages rose nearly 20 percent in the third quarter from the prior quarter, banking regulators said on Monday.

A growing number of homeowners are considering a "strategic default," walking away from their mortgages not out of necessity but because they believe it is in their best financial interests.

As foreclosure casualties mount, the Obama administration Monday is expected to announce additional steps to get long-term help for borrowers, CNNMoney reports.

Daverena White took a chance on the American dream of homeownership -- and lost big.

After a slow start, the Obama administration's mortgage relief program has reached one in five eligible homeowners, a government report says.

Fannie Mae plans to allow homeowners facing foreclosure to stay in their homes and rent them for up to one year in a new program to help troubled borrowers.

A La Cañada Flintridge couple trying to save their home from foreclosure were arrested along with three others on suspicion of beating, torturing and robbing a pair of loan modification agents they believed had done nothing to help them rescue the residence.

Last month a study from the credit reporting agency Experian and consulting outfit Oliver Wyman estimated that close to a fifth of troubled mortgages involved borrowers who were "strategically" defaulting--walking away from mortgages they could pay but decided not to because they owed more than their houses were worth. Self-assigned guardians of financial ethics see the willingness of borrowers to abandon their mortgage debts as a sign of the "erosion of social and moral standards." The aim of these critics is to shame debtors into sticking with their mortgages.

The Obama administration’s effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure may not achieve its goal of helping 3 million to 4 million borrowers, a government watchdog group says.