Real Estate News – May 5, 2012




A U.S. judge has rejected UBS AG’s bid to dismiss a federal regulator’s lawsuit accusing it of misleading Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into buying billions of dollars of risky mortgage debt (via Reuters.com): http://reut.rs/KAfVdO


An Austin, Texas, man was sentenced Thursday in the Western District of Texas to 61 months in prison and was ordered to forfeit $84,010 for his role in operating a foreclosure-rescue scam in Southern California and elsewhere that charged distressed homeowners fees in exchange for fraudulently delaying foreclosure sales (via loansafe.org): http://bit.ly/KnoWML


Largest Mortgage Lender Takes Bigger Bite of Market Share (via REALTORMag): http://bit.ly/K1yiNl


Mortgage workouts at Freddie Mac dropped to 14,000 in the first quarter from 35,000 a year ago and 50,000 in mid-2010. The change is attributed to a decrease in seriously delinquent loans to $72.8 billion in the first quarter from $82.1 billion a year earlier and to the transition of borrowers ineligible for HAMP to the new Standard Modification program (via REALTORMag): http://bit.ly/JnicJT


Three lawyers—one dead, one disbarred and one reportedly still in practice—are among 14 new defendants charged in a major, ongoing federal investigation of alleged corruption in Las Vegas homeowner associations (via abajournal.com): http://bit.ly/K4QDqI


A “major portion” of small commercial-property deals in the U.S. have fallen through because of stricter lending standards, according to a National Association of Realtors survey (via Bloomberg.com): http://bloom.bg/JWdx5x


New housing data shows some signs that the real estate market has finally bottomed out. With current mortgage rates already near all-time lows and the government tapped out, this would be welcome news. But the question is: Will this prove to be the true turning point for housing — or another false bottom leading to further depths? (via foxbusiness.com): http://fxn.ws/LhaQMk


10 Cities Offering The Best Deals On Foreclosed Homes (via HuffingtonPost.com): http://huff.to/K5oRth


Renters of a California condo say they got a rude awakening when a group of guards hired by their homeowners association allegedly used Taser guns to evict them from a house they didn’t know had been foreclosed on (via consumerist.com): http://bit.ly/JSQEgv


Self-storage companies, which rent units to small businesses and consumers under names such as “Uncle Bob’s Self Storage,” produced the best risk-adjusted return among 10 U.S. real estate investment trust indexes in the past decade, according to the BLOOMBERG RISKLESS RETURN RANKING (via Businessweek.com): http://buswk.co/K6TPoI


Is Gen Y’s Live-At-Home Lifestyle Killing The Housing Market? (via Forbes.com): http://onforb.es/IVBas1


Minnesota foreclosures lowest since 2007 (via StarTribune): http://bit.ly/JJHFjh