Housing Market, Foreclosure | featured news

Despite a flurry of recent changes to the program, the Congressional Oversight Panel, chaired by Harvard Prof. Elizabeth Warren, outlines a slew of criticisms in a new report to be released today.

A sharply rising number of foreign investors are looking for Los Angeles pre foreclosures and other bargain-priced properties. A number of them are Chinese parents looking for houses for their children who are entering U.S. universities.

In a counterintuitive solution, nonprofits in Boston are selling houses back to owners after foreclosure.

Underwater on their mortgages and angry at banks, more borrowers are choosing to hand over the keys, even if they can afford the payments. Wynn Bloch has always dutifully paid her bills and socked away money for retirement.

More than 170,000 troubled homeowners are breathing a lasting sigh of relief now that they've received permanent modifications under the Obama administration's foreclosure prevention program.

Swelling ranks of homeowners who are seriously delinquent but haven't yet lost their homes may soon lead to a new round of foreclosures.

Only about a third of the homeowners who have successfully completed the trial period of the Obama administration's mortgage modification program have been offered permanent relief, according to new federal data obtained by the Huffington Post.

The conversion rate -- about 33 percent -- is woefully short of what the Treasury Department had forecast. Treasury thought the rate would be "ranging up to 75 percent," Herbert M. Allison Jr., assistant secretary for financial stability, told the Congressional Oversight Panel in October.

An emergency assistance program that saves thousands from foreclosure each year is in the national spotlight.

President Obama will use a campaign stop for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid  to announce a new initiative to help support homeowners in states hit hardest by the housing crisis.

The U.S. Treasury said its foreclosure-prevention program has cut mortgage payments for about 947,000 households, at least temporarily.