Many housing experts for months have been warning a foreclosure wave would soon flood several markets throughout the country. But was it all a false alarm? Recent surveys have shown that foreclosure sales have dropped to their lowest point in more than two years. And while according to March data, 8 percent more homes did enter the foreclosure process from the previous month, that number is down more than 30 percent from a year ago,...

Although U.S. foreclosure activity may be declining, the problem is far from over. There have been 5 million foreclosures since 2007, reports the Center for Responsible Lending, which estimates that between 3 million and 5 million more will occur over the next couple of years. In 2003, one in 38 U.S. home owners were seriously delinquent on their mortgage payments or in foreclosure, but today those numbers are one in 10. Some of the...

To prevent overall home prices from any further potential drops, the Federal Reserve is urging banks to transform more of its foreclosed homes into rental properties. The Fed made the request to banks in new policy guidelines it released Thursday. “Banking organizations should make good-faith efforts to dispose of foreclosed properties,” the Fed said. The Fed has been urging banks to consider more foreclosure rentals for several...

A $25 billion foreclosure settlement among the nation’s five largest banks and federal regulators isn’t the end to regulator’s efforts to repair the wrongs from lenders’ foreclosure abuses. Regulators are casting a wider net on the number of banks they’re eyeing to punish for wrongful foreclosure practices. The Federal Reserve recently recommended that eight more financial firms, which were not part of the government’s...

States and municipalities may be inadvertently putting in roadblocks and costing taxpayers more when they approve policies that prolong the foreclosure process, such as by extending mediation services, Alfred Pollard, general counsel for the Federal Housing Finance Agency, testified at a House panel on Monday. Many of those foreclosures that get delayed fall in the books of one of the government-sponsored enterprises, Fannie Mae and Freddie...