Real Estate, Foreclosure | featured news

The nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders have amassed a glut of foreclosed homes that threatens to deepen the housing slump.

The number of American households behind on mortgage payments posted a substantial decline from year-earlier levels, but foreclosures remained near record highs in the first quarter.

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.

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.

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.

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....

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.