Housing Market, Foreclosure | featured news

Banks seized more than a million U.S. homes in one year for the first time last year, despite a slowdown in the last few months as questions around foreclosure processing arose, a leading firm said on Thursday.

In a ruling that may affect foreclosures nationwide, the Massachusetts high court has voided the seizure of two homes by Wells Fargo & Company and US Bancorp after the banks failed to show that they held the mortgages at the time of the foreclosures.

U.S. single-family home prices fell for a fourth straight month in October pressured by a supply glut, home foreclosures and high unemployment, data from a closely watched survey showed on Tuesday.

Regulators have opened a new line of inquiry in their mortgage foreclosure probe and are asking big Wall Street banks about the beginning stages of mortgage securitization, two sources familiar with the probe said.

The owner of a failed security business barricaded himself in his soon-to-be foreclosed home, shot at deputies and then killed himself in this well-groomed Central Florida town built by Disney.

Prices in San Francisco and Los Angeles, which had been increasing, both fell in August from July. Home prices are falling faster in the nation's largest cities, and a record number of foreclosures are expected to push prices down further through next year.

Changing the face of foreclosure in America will take some time, several state attorneys general said Wednesday, cautioning that an agreement with major lenders over revamped foreclosure practices was not imminent. "We want to move as quickly as possibly but it has to be done right," said Roy Cooper, the attorney general of North Carolina. "We have plowed this ground before."Ever since the law enforcement officials from all 50 states signed on last month to a highly publicized investigation of big mortgage lenders, there has been a public tug of war.

The number of U.S. homes taken over by banks fell 9 percent in October as foreclosure processing was stalled by questionable paperwork, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.

The jump from the previous quarter is the first time the measure has increased since early 2009, according to data from MDA DataQuick. However, the numbers are down from the same period last year.

The Federal Reserve chairman says the review is 'seeking to determine whether systematic weaknesses are leading to improper foreclosures.'