In her blog this week, real estate broker Christine Donovan, who analyzes the Huntington Beach market in her weekly “real estate minute,”  asks, “Do you ever wonder why it takes so long to get a short sale or a loan modfication completed?  It can take months or even years to to get a short sale or a loan modification done.  Why?”

She lists “any number of reasons:”

1. Hard to collect all necessary documents from borrower/owner.
   This may be because the banks never seem to receive the documents until they’ve been faxed in 5 or 6 times. More

PHOENIX — Hearings for a short sale bill are being held Monday at the State Capitol in Phoenix.

One in eight homes on the market is a short sale and Treasurer Dean Martin says the lengthy process is slowing Arizona’s economic recovery.

The bill would make sure realtors know how to handle the complicated process of short sales by forcing them to complete 15 hours of instruction.

The treasurer’s short sale task force will be testifying at the hearing.

The federal government is also working to speed thing up by introducing the Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program starting April 5th. More

The Mortgage Bankers Association is the trade association for the lending industry: they put out weekly stats about mortgage application volume and refis, advocate fair lending, and lobby for their members, a group that includes law firms, tech companies like IBM, and, of course, mortgage bankers and brokers.

And, it’s been revealed, they’re going to be renters.

According to a story by James R. Hagerty in today’s Wall Street Journal indicates that the association has sold its headquarters in Washington, D.C. for some $30 million less than it paid just a couple of years ago. More

More than 35,000 foreclosure sales from Jan. 2008 through June 2009 cost capital-area homeowners $2.7 billion in lost equity, says Rob Wassmer, chair of the public policy and administration department at California State University of Sacramento.

Wassmer’s calculations in a new study say foreclosure properties sold at about $600 million in discounts while being sold in a declining market. That, in turn, stripped another $1 billion in values from other foreclosure properties nearby when it was their turn. And the whole thing stripped another $1 billion in equity from homes not being foreclosed and trapped in the crossfire. More

The Contra Costa and Solano counties food bank on Thursday reported a 64 percent increase in demand for its services over three years, a spike it attributed mostly to high unemployment during the recession.

About 130,000 people are receiving assistance from the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, according to a study based on data collected between February and June of last year. The 64 percent increase was compared to a similar 2006 study in the two counties.

Contra Costa’s unemployment rate is 11.2 percent and Solano’s is 12 percent. More than 70 percent of 448 food bank clients surveyed said they were unemployed and 44.7 percent said they had been out of work for more than two years. More

SAN DIEGO (AP) — Mortgage default notices for California homeowners fell 24 percent during the fourth quarter, suggesting the worst might be over for foreclosures in entry-level markets while problems spread to pricier neighborhoods, a research firm said Wednesday.

There were 84,568 default notices filed from October through December, down from 111,689 during the previous three-month period but up 12 percent from 75,230 during the same period of 2008, MDA DataQuick reported.

The latest tally is down 38 percent from the peak of 135,431 in the first quarter of 2009 and marks the third straight quarterly decline. MDA DataQuick cautioned that the peak number was inflated by new notification requirements that delayed some foreclosures in 2008. More

Up to 2005, Mabini “Benny” Fuertis was doing pretty well.

He earned enough from his job as a train conductor together with a U.S. Postal Service pension to cover the mortgage, credit card and car payments and still put aside $12,000 a year in savings.

The problems began when he lost his job but didn’t change his spending habits. More

To mandate modifications or not mandate modifications.

That is the question in a debate now brewing between consumer advocates and loan servicers on whether judges should have the power to force modifications and new loan terms as part of the state’s foreclosure mediation program.

MUCH has been said about the high rate of home foreclosures, but the most interesting question may be this: Why is the mortgage default rate so low?

After all, millions of American homeowners are “underwater,” meaning that they owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. In Nevada, nearly two-thirds of homeowners are in this category. Yet most of them are dutifully continuing to pay their mortgages, despite substantial financial incentives for walking away from them.

A family that financed the entire purchase of a $600,000 home in 2006 could now find itself still owing most of that mortgage, even though the home is now worth only $300,000. The family could rent a similar home for much less than its monthly mortgage payment, saving thousands of dollars a year and hundreds of thousands over a decade. More

With the tax season under way, it’s a good time to get advice on vexing tax-related questions.

Here is some recent advice to readers from Internal Revenue Service spokesman Jesse Weller. To see more of his answers on federal taxes, go to: www.sacbee.com/ask. That’s where you’ll also see answers from other financial experts on investing, money management and wills/estates. More

LAKE FOREST, Calif., Jan. 18 /PRNewswire/ — RES.NET is proud to announce their January 2010 launch of Accelerated Management Platform (AMP).  Until now, Real Estate Agents were forced to manage their properties through separate processes and systems.  RES.NET has changed all that with its Accelerated Management Platform (AMP).  AMP will improve operational efficiencies by managing tasks, storing data, organizing prospects and contacts and give you global oversight of all of your listings and historical data. This platform will also give Real Estate Brokers and Agents maximum exposure to Industry service professionals within the RES.NET community.

RES.NET, a Software application company established in 2003, by its parent company US Real Estate Services, Inc., created an REO management application for asset managers to manage real estate assets and connect with the entire supply chain.  ”RES.NET recognizes the real estate agent as the core element in any real estate transaction.  Offering a full scale application to the agent was key in continuing to build RES.NET’s community not only for today’s business, but for tomorrow as well,” said Todd Mobraten, US Real Estate Services Chief Operating Officer. More

As the President prepares for next month’s State of the Union Address, despite the stock market’s remarkable rebound, the nation’s economy is still struggling. Most notably, unemployment and foreclosures represent huge obstacles to economic recovery that the government must still find answers for. A successful housing rescue plan needs to include a provision to reduce mortgage principals for at-risk homeowners, which will require the cooperation of the bailed out banks that helped get us into this mess.

There are no perfect choices as President Barack Obama sits down with his financial advisors to talk over just what they’ll do next in the housing mess. Some choices are just better than others. Wall Street greed and bankers blunders got us to this point with the economy, and straightening out the mess is like cleaning up a kitchen after a bunch of short order cooks have thrown hundreds of sloppy dinners at the wall.  More

George Bernard Shaw once said, “If all economists were laid end to end they would not reach a conclusion.”

A speech by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke this month sparked what is likely to be a classic debate between economists. It will be decades before economists arrive at anything near a consensus on what caused the housing crisis. More

With more than one in 10 homes in Nevada receiving a foreclosure notice in 2009, the Silver State had the nation’s highest foreclosure rate for the third consecutive year.

California-based RealtyTrac reported this week that Nevada’s December foreclosure activity increased 27 percent from the previous month, but was down 22 percent from December 2008.

Meanwhile, fourth quarter foreclosure activity in Nevada was down 37 percent from the previous quarter as a result of substantial decreases in October and November.  More

It sounds like a contradiction, but strong arguments can be made that the East County housing market is both a seller’s market and a great time to buy.

It’s a seller’s market because there is currently a limited supply of houses for sale, prices are no longer in free-fall and many sellers are receiving multiple offers above the asking price in bidding wars. Attractive houses at attractive prices are snapped up in fairly short order by eager buyers. On the other hand, buyers have a lot of things going for them right now: discounts of 50 percent or more on fairly new houses, $6,500-$8,000 federal tax incentives if they buy soon and interest rates near historic lows. More

Hercules has stepped up the pace of its short-sale home purchases, closing on several more properties over the last half-year, including the condominium of a councilman’s daughter. But the city has yet to reveal the addresses, the sellers or the prices of the "underwater" homes it bought in the most recent quarter.

The transactions came up briefly during a meeting last week of the council’s Transportation and Housing Committee, composed of Mayor Kris Valstad and Councilman Ed Balico.

From October through December, the city agreed to buy two homes under the Homeownership Retention and Loss Mitigation Program, according to a staff report; the city also sold one home to a "qualified client." The report does not identify the addresses, owners or prices, and no one asked at the meeting. Affordable Housing project manager Rachael Redford, filling in for colleague Jonathen Sakamoto, who was ill, told a reporter to get the information from city spokeswoman Doreen Mathews.

Some residents have complained that the city’s affordable housing program lacks transparency. More

The amount of California foreclosure cancellations increased 26.5% in December to 13,243, primarily due to loan modifications.  And for the first time this number overtook foreclosures reaching real-estate owned (REO) status, according to ForeclosureRadar, which tracks foreclosure activity in the state.

In December, the amount of foreclosures heading back to the banks, REO, dropped 11.9% from the previous month to 12,437. Significant declines in foreclosure discounts by lenders drove the decrease in sales to third parties, according to the report. More

Financially stressed homeowners left hanging while their banks consider whether to approve the short sales of their properties may benefit from new federal guidelines that give lenders a 10-day limit in which to respond to purchase offers.  More

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