FBI continues search for couple behind mortgage scam
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The couple persuaded distressed homeowners to sign over their properties, promising to invest the proceeds of the home sales. Instead, they spent the money on themselves.

Title Insurance Companies Initiate Move to Protect Industry
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Fidelity National Financial is reportedly leading the campaign launched by title insurance companies in the U.S. to demand that the industry be indemnified from any potential fallout that will be caused by the ongoing nationwide probe on lenders' foreclosure processing methods.

Foreclosure Investigation by States to Stay on Track
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Though some of the players will change, the coordinated effort by attorneys general across the country to investigate — and ultimately reshape — foreclosure procedures is not expected to lose momentum because of Tuesday’s election.

Fannie and Freddie Face Uncertain Future
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House Republicans have made punching bags of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, criticizing the federal bailout of the mortgage giants and promising to end the government’s longstanding use of the companies to reduce the cost of mortgage loans.

An Effort to Adapt a European-Style Tool to U.S. Mortgages
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Covered bonds, a financing tool that has been popular in Europe since the 18th century, are winning converts here as a new way to finance residential and commercial mortgages.

Fannie and Freddie Drop Florida Law Firm
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The government-sponsored companies, which own or guarantee more than half of the nation’s mortgage market, ended dealings with the firm, David J. Stern PA, after it came under scrutiny from the Florida attorney general’s office amid claims that documents used in home seizures were fraudulent or improperly prepared.

Banks Versus Title Insurers On Liabilities Regarding Foreclosure Errors
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It’s a great risk that banks are taking by refusing to cooperate with title insurers. Title insurance is helping wipe out the bloated inventory of distressed properties in the market. If title insurers decide to withdraw from protecting distressed properties, a lot of foreclosed homes in the United States may remain unsold.

How Can the Foreclosure Crisis Eventually Affect All of Us?
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The foreclosure crisis engulfing the real estate market has far reaching implications for all of us. In fact, many of us might not have realized the havoc this fiasco could wreak upon not only upon those whose houses were wrongly foreclosed, but also upon those of us owning a house and those of us thinking about purchasing one.

Foreclosure Mess Takes A Turn For The Worse!
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Title insurance is no longer issued on Washington DC Foreclosures of formerly owner occupied properties!

Four plead guilty to mortgage fraud
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Four South Florida residents pleaded guilty Monday to charges they engaged in a mortgage fraud scheme involving properties in the Wellington subdivision of Versailles.

Bank Pushback May Doom Title Insurance Deal
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Banks are reluctant to sign a sort of model industry agreement to take on insurers' legal costs, because it could expose them to the suggestion they did something wrong, industry representatives said.

How the Banks Put the Economy Underwater
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In Congressional hearings last week, Obama administration officials acknowledged that uncertainty over foreclosures could delay the recovery of the housing market. The implications for the economy are serious. For instance, the International Monetary Fund found that the persistently high unemployment in the United States is largely the result of foreclosures and underwater mortgages, rather than widely cited causes like mismatches between job requirements and worker skills.

EDITORIAL: More on the Mortgage Mess
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Consumer advocates, the press, investors and homeowners have already compiled a compelling list of transgressions: conflicts of interest that have banks pushing foreclosures, without a good-faith effort to modify troubled loans. Dubious fees that inflate mortgage balances. The hundreds of thousands of flawed foreclosure affidavits that violated homeowners’ legal protections. The misplaced documents. And it goes on.

Debt Collectors Face a Hazard: Writer’s Cramp
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When Michael Gazzarato took a job that required him to sign hundreds of affidavits in a single day, he had one demand for his employer: a much better pen. “They tried to get me to do it with a Bic, and I wasn’t going — I wasn’t having it,” he said. “It was bad when I had to use the plastic Papermate-type pen. It was a nightmare.”

Opinion letter to NYT: Steps by Bank of America
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We initiated a nationwide suspension of foreclosures to clear the air of industrywide concerns that were raised about how mortgage servicers have managed the process. We made improvements that we believe will help ensure confidence that the underlying basis for foreclosure, and the associated paperwork, is appropriate.