One in 10 American households with a mortgage was at risk of foreclosure this summer as the government’s efforts to help have had little impact stemming the housing crisis.
About 9.9 percent of homeowners had missed at least one mortgage payment as of June 30, Mortgage Bankers Association said Thursday.
That number, which is adjusted for seasonal [...]

Palm Beach Post: Cash investors hunting for abandoned and foreclosed properties will take a back seat to buyers using federal housing money under an “unprecedented” agreement with the nation’s largest private lenders.
The “First Look” program, announced Wednesday, gives local governments and community groups using Neighborhood Stabilization money the first crack at buying bank-owned homes in [...]

(Reuters) – The number of U.S. homes headed for foreclosure fell during the second quarter, marking the first such drop since the housing slump began in 2006, but the improvement may be fleeting as the number of newly delinquent homeowners rose, a banking group said on Wednesday.
The percentage of loans in the foreclosure process declined [...]

Daily Finance: Home sales are hitting new lows, the number of homeowners behind on their mortgages is again climbing, as is the number of foreclosures. Housing market misery is widespread—but particularly intense for the troubled homeowners relying on the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), the federal foreclosure relief program.
Criticized both by those who argue for more [...]

BOULDER, Colo. (MarketWatch) — The recession is “officially” over according to GDP figures. Stocks are up 50% from the March 2009 bottom. Gold and silver are up dramatically, too. So what’s the only remaining asset class that’s still cheap?
Real estate.
Sure, in most parts of the country the market is still in the toilet. July marked [...]

Palm Beach Post: More than 10,000 Florida homes were repossessed by banks in July, a 60 percent increase compared to the same time last year according to foreclosure data released today by RealtyTrac.
In Palm Beach County, banks took back a record high 559 foreclosed properties last month.
At the same time, however, the Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac [...]

(Reuters) – As many as 50,000 struggling homeowners in five U.S. states with high unemployment may receive help from a special $600 million federal fund intended to head off foreclosures.

State housing agencies in Ohio, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oregon and Rhode Island can use money from the Treasury Department’s “Hardest Hit Fund” for foreclosure mitigation [...]

Palm Beach Post: Florida housing officials say it could be late December before the majority of struggling homeowners begin receiving $418 million in federal foreclosure prevention aid given to the state in February.
Florida’s plan on how to use the money, which would provide an up to 18-month reprieve on mortgage payments for unemployed or underemployed homeowners, [...]

Palm Beach Post:  Florida’s purported largest foreclosure law firm filed thousands of documents to take people’s homes that contained deceptive and intentionally ambiguous information, according to a proposed class action lawsuit.
The suit, filed last month in U.S. District Court, Southern District of Florida, says David J. Stern and his Plantation-based legal team violated the Racketeer [...]

(Reuters) – Foreclosures rose in 3 of every four large U.S. metro areas in this year’s first half, likely ruling out sustained home price gains until 2013, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.
Unemployment was the main culprit driving foreclosure actions on more than 1.6 million properties, the company said.  ”We’re not going to [...]

Palm Beach Post: With today’s reduced property values and increased unemployment, it’s tempting for some homeowners to just throw their hands up in defeat, allow the bank to take their home in foreclosure and rid themselves of the monthly mortgage burden.
Even suffering through the paperwork and stress of a short sale may seem too much [...]

It’s 6am in Stockton, and the sun rises again on a town I’ve been visiting for three years for one purpose: this is where housing cratered first and worst.
This community in California’s Central Valley gave birth to the phrase “foreclosure brown” to describe the dead lawns at abandoned houses.
Things are still awful, but they are changing.
Read [...]

Palm Beach Post: Condo Vultures is reporting an average of 4,000 South Florida properties per month were taken back by the bank during the first half of 2010, a trend seen also in monthly RealtyTrac reports on foreclosures and repossessions. (June’s RealtyTrac study will be released Thursday.)
In Palm Beach County, bank takeovers _ the final [...]

CNBC: “I had no idea that they could foreclose,” Tony Goodman tells me.
Neither did I, but Goodman’s homeowners association did just that in April because he owed $769 in back dues.
Read The Full Story Here

(Reuters) – Banks repossessed a record number of U.S. homes in the second quarter, but slowed new foreclosure notices to manage distressed properties on the market, real estate data company RealtyTrac said on Thursday.
The root problems of job losses and wage cuts persist, making a sustained U.S. housing recovery elusive.
Banks took control of 269,962 properties [...]

Palm Beach Post: Banks are expected to take back more than 1 million homes nationwide before the year is over, raising concerns about further price drops as more foreclosed properties work through the system and onto the market.
A report released today by RealtyTrac, a housing analysis firm based in Irvine, Calif., found bank repossessions in the [...]

Foreclosure fillings fell in June, the third straight month of declines, but still remain at record levels, according to a report released Thursday.
Foreclosure fillings dropped 2.81 percent in June from the previous month and 6.98 percent from the previous year.
In all, 313,841 properties generated a foreclosure notices. One in every 411 homes in America received [...]

Palm Beach Post:  Beginning Monday, Palm Beach County homeowners facing foreclosure will be guaranteed a chance to negotiate a different ending with their lenders as the courts try to reduce a foreclosure overload.
All foreclosures filed on or after Monday are subject to a new state Supreme Court order requiring mediation on homesteaded properties before a [...]

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Foreclosures accounted for a third of all sales — and sold at a nearly 30% discount — during the first three months of 2010.
According to a new report from RealtyTrac, the marketer of foreclosed properties, 31% of all sales were foreclosures. And homebuyers purchasing those properties paid a whopping 27% less, [...]

Reuters: Nearly one out of every three US home sales in the first quarter was a foreclosure property as steep price discounts boosted demand for distressed real estate, RealtyTrac said in a new report on Wednesday.
Foreclosure homes accounted for 31 percent of all residential sales in the first quarter of 2010, with the average sales price [...]