Housing Market, Foreclosure | featured news

Lower unemployment, bankruptcies and foreclosures in March reduced the nation's economic stress to its lowest point this year, according to The Associated Press' monthly analysis of conditions around the country.

Investors drove up U.S. home sales last month, plunking down cash to grab cheap homes at risk of foreclosure. But first-time homebuyers, who are crucial to a housing recovery, stayed away.

Bank regulators announced settlements on Wednesday with the largest home lenders over allegations of shoddy foreclosure practices, but the pacts did not include financial penalties.

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday voted to kill President Barack Obama's signature program to help struggling homeowners avoid foreclosure.

Federal regulators and the top law enforcement officers in all fifty states are eyeing big changes to the dysfunctional home loan industry. If these officials have their way, borrowers who take out home loans and the investors who buy them will work closer together and find common ground to minimize foreclosures, while the middle men who are supposed to be performing that job will see their power diminished.

U.S. regulators' efforts to settle with banks over improper mortgage foreclosures are being hampered by infighting among the groups involved in the talks, and a settlement may take a while, according to sources familiar with the matter.

The average U.S. borrower in the throes of foreclosure hasn't made a mortgage payment in 17 months, up from nearly 11 months two years ago.

Major U.S. banks are about to get penalized for "critical deficiencies" and shortcomings in how they handled foreclosures, a top federal regulator said Thursday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing examining the Dodd-Frank Act six months after its congressional approval.

During the housing crash, it was good to be a foreclosure king. David Stern was Florida's top foreclosure lawyer, and he lived like an oil sheik. He piled up a collection of trophy properties, glided through town in a fleet of six-figure sports cars and, with his bombshell wife, partied on an ocean cruiser the size of a small hotel....

The foreclosure crisis is getting worse as high unemployment and lackluster job prospects force homeowners in an increasing number of U.S. metropolitan areas into dire financial straits....