One year after its inception, the Obama administration’s $75 billion housing help program has failed, Republican lawmakers said Thursday in a new report obtained by ABC News.

The report, released by two GOP lawmakers on the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, asserts that the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) is harming the country’s economic recovery.

“By every empirical measure, HAMP has failed,” concluded Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio., citing a record number of homeowners in foreclosure. More

An Ohio man is making national headlines after claiming he took a bulldozer to his home to prevent his bank from repossessing it.

Terry Hoskins told NBC affiliate WLWT that when the bank began foreclosure proceedings to collect $160,000, he decided to tear the home down in order to “make banks think twice about it before they take someone’s home.”

Hoskins said the lender, New Richmond-based RiverHills Bank, turned down a buyer’s offer of $170,000 for the home, which Hoskins valued at nearly $350,000.More

Struggling homeowners on the verge of foreclosure are being warned by the state Attorney General’s Office of the latest mortgage-relief scam known as “forensic loan audits.”

Forensic loan audits are what state Attorney General Jerry Brown calls “phony mortgage relief services” that charge upfront fees for a forensic review of loans but will never lead to lowered monthly payments or loan principle.

California is a minefield for scams, because it accounted for 22 percent of the nation’s 632,573 foreclosures in 2009. The metropolitan Stockton area has ranked at or near the top of the nation in foreclosure filings since the housing bubble burst in 2007. More

Long time data tracking RealtyTrac.com reported over 315,000 homeowners were issued foreclosure notices in January 2010. While that number is down from 349,000 reported in December, one of the biggest months for foreclosures in history, it is still up over previous Januaries.

Industry insiders and economists agree we have not seen the end and as summer approaches if employment continues to decline, incomes stay low or decreasing and even moderate inflation continues more foreclosures are on the way.

This next wave will not be of home owners who purchased using the more dangerous adjustable rate mortgages or other sub-prime loans. Homeowners in this round of foreclosures will consist mainly of mortgagors who have standard, 30 year fixed rate loans including those who made down payments of up to 20% or more. More

Feb. 2 (Bloomberg) — The share of homes vacant and for sale rose in the fourth quarter after banks seized property from borrowers who defaulted on mortgages.

The homeowner vacancy rate increased to 2.7 percent from 2.6 percent in the third quarter, the U.S. Census Bureau said in a report today. There were 2.09 million empty properties on the market, up from 1.99 million, according to the report.

The rate gained even as the number of properties listed with brokers declined because the survey includes bank-owned homes for sale without a realtor. Foreclosures probably will reach 3 million this year, surpassing the record of 2.82 million in 2009, according to Irvine, California-based RealtyTrac Inc. More

The Obama Administration’s proposed fiscal year 2011 budget includes shifting the Treasury Department’s focus of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) away from large financial institutions to a renewed focus on foreclosure prevention efforts and small businesses and unemployment.

The Treasury said along with a new “focus on the challenges of helping families avoid foreclosure,” TARP will aim to bring down unemployment from record highs. Other initiatives in the budget include $30bn in TARP funds to help community and smaller banks extend credit to small businesses and $500m in efficiency savings in the Treasury Department, including using paperless processing for electronic benefit payments and tax collections. More

As we have been forecasting for the last two years, the second wave of mortgage defaults and foreclosures will hit the economy this year. Not only will we have failure in prime loans and option-arm loans, but we are faced with a new crop of subprime and ALT-A loans put into motion by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Ginnie Mae and FHA. In addition, we find it of great interest that the FHA is changing the rules to purchase homes. That, of course, means less homes will be purchased.

The incidence of unemployment may be lessening, but it isn’t going away. Those of you who keep your ear to the ground know that real unemployment is 22.5% and in cities like Detroit it is somewhere near 45 to 50 percent. This is the result of free trade, globalization, offshoring and outsourcing. No city in America has been deprived of their livelihood more than Detroit. Yet, this is only the beginning. If allowed to continue 30 percent more of our jobs will be allowed to leave America, making our country an economic basket case over the next 20 years. The $25 billion that our federal government is about to loan to the states will help keep unemployment paying out and save some 40 states from going into bankruptcy. That will keep some Americans going but not for long. More

If your house is worth 75% or less than what you owe on your mortgage, should you mail the keys to the bank and just walk away?

This question, with its sharp moral edge, has been debated since the beginning of the housing crisis. And today there is some new information, in the form of a survey by First American CoreLogic.

According to CoreLogic, nearly one in ten mortgages is on a property that’s worth less than 75% of the outstanding mortgage principal. That shockingly high proportion will rise if the housing market continues to correct downward, as I believe it should in many parts of the country. The survey also puts a number on what it would take to simply gross up all of those deeply underwater mortgages: $745 billion, about 6% of the total value of American residential mortgages now in force, and about 5% of GDP. More

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) — A new report shows Merced had one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country for 2009. According to RealtyTrac, Las Vegas had the nation’s highest foreclosure rate.

Twelve percent of the homes there have received some sort of foreclosure filing. Merced is third on the list at about 10 percent.

Fresno and the Visalia- Porterville area are also in the top 25. Many people still consider Merced ground zero for foreclosures.

But now that prices are more affordable and there are state and federal stimulus programs, home sales are picking back up. And some local realtors say the worst of the housing crisis is over. More

Barely a block in Merced is without a For Sale or For Rent sign, or an empty home or two with the tell-tale signs of foreclosure. The visual cues reflect a tsunami of statistics that show a county where many homeowners are suffering:

From September 2006 to December 2009, 9,561 homes in Merced County — or one in every seven — were returned to banks; more than $3.6 billion worth of mortgage payments went unpaid.  More

DETROIT — The demand for a moratorium on foreclosures, first raised several years ago by Detroit’s Moratorium NOW! Coalition, is now being advanced nationally by the Rev. Jesse Jackson, leader of the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition. He was the keynote speaker Jan. 24 during a day-long mobilization against banks and mortgage companies at Central United Methodist Church in downtown Detroit.

Jackson recalled that Michigan’s legislature declared a five-year halt to foreclosures during the Great Depression of the 1930s. He said the nation’s five largest banks have 3.3 million mortgages eligible for modification (monthly payment reduction), but have modified only 30,000. More

Driven inside by steady rain, nearly 30 real estate investors promptly piped down Monday when a foreclosure auctioneer warned they were getting too noisy in the main hall of the Sonoma County administration building.

“We’re already in trouble, guys,” Amber Andewiel declared, before auctioning off a Wyoming Drive home in east Santa Rosa for $280,100.

The auctioneers and bidders fear they soon may need to move the foreclosure auctions from the administration building at 575 Administration Dr., a site they say they has been used for at least two decades. More

Millions of Americans who are struggling to save their homes from foreclosure are trapped in a labyrinth of disappointment and misinformation created by the very institutions they’ve been told are trying to help them.

Ten months into the government’s third program in two years to stop a record wave of foreclosures, homeowners, housing counselors, consumer advocates and attorneys working with borrowers report that the latest effort is falling far short of its goal. In many cases, lenders are moving to foreclose even after homeowners get approved for loan modification, housing counselors and attorneys say. More

NEW BEDFORD, Mass. —

A New Bedford couple is suing Bank of America for $500,000 because of what they call a foreclosure nightmare.

The bank seized their house and locked it up, but they say it was all a terrible mistake. Several wrong address numbers on a court document led to their house being foreclosed upon, instead of another house up the street.

Charlie and Maria Cardoso said they bought a second home in Florida years ago with savings. It has three bedrooms and a pool and they owned it outright until Bank of America foreclosed. This month, the bank seized the house. More

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Hundreds of thousands of troubled homeowners who are making lower mortgage payments on a trial basis are at risk of being kicked out of President Obama’s foreclosure-prevention program.

Companies that service the mortgages have until Jan. 31 to review all trial modifications that have been underway for several months under the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), according to a Treasury Department guideline issued late last month. The Treasury Dept. said it would issue new guidelines next week, but wouldn’t give details.

During the review period, servicers must determine whether borrowers have made all their payments and have handed in all the necessary paperwork. Those who haven’t will get letters giving them 30 days to comply. More

MILWAUKEE - Clergy and community leaders are calling on banks to do something about their vacant and abandoned homes.

The group Common Ground says such homes hurt our neighborhoods.

The group wants the banks to either fix up foreclosed and abandoned homes or tear them down.

Members say these homes bring down neighborhoods and bring crime up. More

Saqirah Redmond is hopeful that her Covington home is on its way out of foreclosure. But on any given day, fear still creeps in.

With the exception of three months last fall, she has not paid her mortgage in nearly two years.

“It’s very scary because I don’t know whether I’m going to be able to keep this house,” said Redmond, a divorced mother of two small children. More

Nearly a year after the Obama administration unveiled its ambitious housing rescue program, foreclosure tallies continue to break records. Foreclosure filings were reported on more than 2.8 million properties in 2009, up 21 percent from the previous year and 120 percent from 2007, according to RealtyTrac. With nearly 10 percent of mortgages now delinquent–which is also a new record–even more homeowners appear headed for foreclosure this year. “A massive supply of delinquent loans continues to loom over the housing market,” RealtyTrac CEO James J. Saccacio said in a statement. “Many of those delinquencies will end up in the foreclosure process in 2010 and beyond.” More

“Roughly 8 million to 13 million foreclosures are expected over the next five years, according to the Congressional Oversight Panel for the $700 billion bank-bailout program.” reported in Market Watch about the status of the Obama foreclosure bailout.

As the country teeters on the razor edge of some semblance of recovery, this news makes one wonder what is really happening in the mortgage meltdown and subsequent bailout. The servicers for the banks insist it is the borrowers fault for not returning the proper documents on time.

Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Michael Barr agrees that there is a documentation issue; however, it is on the side of the servicers, not the borrower. More

The Obama administration’s foreclosure prevention program reached about 850,000 homeowners through December, including more than 50,000 in the Washington region, according to Treasury Department data released Friday, but the effort continues to struggle to make a significant impact.

About 1,500 District residents have had mortgage payments lowered under the program, called Making Home Affordable. In Virginia, about 22,000 homeowners have been helped, compared with 28,000 in Maryland. The numbers represent an overall increase in modifications of about 17 percent from the previous month, according to Treasury data.  More