Mortgage, Foreclosure | featured news

HSBC Holdings Plc agreed to pay $249 million to end a case-by-case review of past foreclosures in the U.S., regulators announced on Friday.

Consumer advocates have complained that U.S. mortgage lenders are getting off easy in a deal to settle charges that they wrongfully foreclosed on many homeowners....

Ten major banks and mortgage companies agreed Monday to pay $8.5 billion to settle federal complaints that they wrongfully foreclosed on homeowners who should have been allowed to stay in their homes.

San Bernardino County, with some of the nation’s highest foreclosure rates, may use eminent domain to buy up mortgages and cut them to the current value of the homes.

With each passing month, the foreclosure crisis continues to slowly burn. The Obama Administration keeps splashing water on it—massive remodifications, mortgage settlement cash, rental programs—hoping something will stick. On Friday, here at the Clinton Global Initiative, in Chicago, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan and FHA Commissioner Carol Galante announced yet another: a program to pool together mortgage loans on the brink of default, and save them.

Bank of America said Friday it would reduce by about $100,000 the amount owed by as many as 200,000 underwater homeowners as part of the recently announced government foreclosure settlement with top mortgage servicers.

The U.S. government said on Thursday that the biggest U.S. banks will provide $25 billion in relief to distressed homeowners and states, as officials hold lenders responsible for taking illegal shortcuts during foreclosures and other mortgage paperwork.

As the nation's five largest mortgage lenders edge close to a $25 billion settlement over foreclosure abuses, it's becoming clear that the deal will have little or no impact on their future bottom lines.

More and more, homeowners say that mortgages they thought were dead and buried are springing back to life, sometimes haunting them all the way into foreclosure.

Fourteen mortgage servicers have begun mailing out 4.3 million letters to potential victims of robo-signing. The letters will invite borrowers to submit their cases for a free review by independent consultants. Aggrieved homeowners ensnared by a foreclosure system riddled with misconduct and error are set to get their first shot at winning some cash back from the banks.