An email with the subject line “Complaint from your customers” is circulating and may be a scam, according to a scam alert by the Council of Better Business Bureaus.  The email appears to come from a Better Business employee about a recently filed complaint with the organization and tells recipients to review the matter and advise the organization of their position on the complaint. Recipients are directed to a link which the email claims will take the reader to the organization’s website. In fact, the link takes recipients elsewhere, where a virus is downloaded to their computer.  An attachment in the email also may contain a virus.  The Better Business Bureau has requested that recipients of the scam email alert the organization at https://www.bbb.org/scam/report-a-scam/.

The latest servicer assessments – part of the Obama administration’s housing scorecard – summarize performance on three categories of program implementation; identifying and contacting homeowners; homeowner evaluation and assistance; and program reporting, management and governance.  For the third quarter of 2011, only JPMorgan Chase, NA was found to be in need of substantial improvement under the program.  While JPMorgan Chase demonstrated some progress in areas reported for the third quarter, the servicer has a number of outstanding items from previous quarters that have not yet been addressed and play a critical part in their broader execution of the program.  For these reasons Treasury will withhold servicer incentives from JPMorgan Chase for the third consecutive quarter and will permanently reduce incentives owed to JPMorgan Chase unless the outstanding items are addressed before the next assessment.  Bank of America, NA was found to be in need of moderate improvement for the third quarter of 2011, but will continue to have its servicer incentives for previous quarters withheld.  Although Bank of America has not yet remediated all of the areas previously identified as requiring substantial improvement from the previous quarter, it has made progress in addressing a number of items.

Foreclosure-prevention actions by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac increased in the third quarter of 2011, according to a report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.  Since entering conservatorship in 2008, the GSEs have taken nearly 2 million foreclosure-prevention actions and completed 1 million loan modifications.  According to the FHFA report, the increase in completed foreclosure prevention activity in the third quarter was driven primarily by loan modifications and repayment plans.  Two-thirds of all borrowers who received loan modifications in the third quarter had their monthly payments reduced by more than 20 percent.  Additionally, the GSEs’ cumulative re-financings through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) increased 11 percent during the third quarter to nearly 928,600 loans.

National mortgage delinquencies – the ratio of borrowers 60 or more days past due – are expected to decline to approximately 5 percent by the end of 2012 from just under 6 percent at the end of 2011, according to TransUnion’s annual forecast.  The expected mortgage delinquency decline in 2012 would follow recent yearly trends, including an expected 7 percent decrease by the end of this year and a 7 percent reduction in 2010.  This is in contrast to more than 50 percent year-over-year increases between 2006 and 2009.

Tight lending standards by the commercial banks on which home builders and developers largely rely to finance their projects continued in the third quarter, according to the most recent quarterly survey by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) Economics and Housing Policy Group on the availability of credit to the housing industry.  More than half of the single-family builders and developers surveyed by NAHB indicated they had decided to put any new construction or land activity on hold until the financing climate improves.  In normal times, housing accounts for more than 17 percent of the nation’s gross domestic product.  Constructing 100 new-homes generates more than 300 full-time jobs and $8.9 million in local, state and federal tax revenue that supports local schools and communities across the land.

Richard Tegley is a REALTOR®/Broker Associate with the National Realty Group and a member of the California Association of REALTORS® (C.A.R.) and the National Association of REALTORS® (N.A.R.).  Contact Richard at (951) 533-9340 or email rt@richardtegley.com or visit www.richardtegley.com

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