AGBeat Columnist: Tara Steele
Tara Steele is the News Director at AgentGenius, covering real estate news, technology news and everything in between. If you'd like to reach Tara with a question, comment, press release or hot news tip, she frequently checks her email, simply click the link below.
Stalled $26 billion civil mortgage settlement now finalized
Mortgage foreclosure settlement In a historic deal after repeated delays and over a year of negotiations, the Justice Department, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and 49 state attorneys general has finalized a $26 billion civil settlement with five of the largest mortgage lenders for wrongful foreclosures through robo-signing wherein homes were foreclosed upon without human review or proper ...
Trulia launches real time detailed local data, hires new VP
Trulia Local released Today, real estate search site Trulia is announcing the final destination of several projects coming together, like hourly crime reporting in the form of Trulia Local which is a “layered map” that provides a visual representation of a county, a city, a neighborhood and even down to a block-by-block view of an area to answer the “what ...
Completed foreclosures drop 24% over the year
A shift in foreclosures CoreLogic released its first national Foreclosure Report which provides monthly data on completed foreclosures, foreclosure inventory and 90+ delinquency rates, reporting that completed foreclosures for all of 2011 totaled 830,000 compared with 1.1 million in 2010. CoreLogic notes that since September 2008, there have been approximately 3.2 million completed foreclosures. Completed foreclosures fell from November (57,000) ...
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Several states hold out, one leaves $25B mortgage settlement talks
Settlement talks in limbo AGBeat has had a close eye on multi-state talks with the largest banks as over a year ago, all 50 states’ Attorneys Generals committed to negotiate terms on behalf of homeowners abused by banks leading up to and during the housing crash. Monday was the final deadline for all 50 states to declare whether they were ...
Banks’ brilliant idea to give cash incentives to short sale
The housing crash Now that some of the causes and effects of the housing crash are becoming universally agreed upon and banks are ordered to pay billions in civil lawsuits and settlements for illegal foreclosures, the big banks are struggling to regain their composure after overlooking simple fixes like not continuing robo-signing documents illegally without human review before kicking people ...
HotPads releases Kindle Fire app with native mapping
The challenge of the Kindle Fire Although more and more Amazon Kindle Fire tablet apps are hitting the market, there are some serious limitations that developers must work around, specifically no GPS and no access to mobile networks which is a very serious issue for any company developing an app for real estate search. HotPads has announced today the launch ...
Lovely rental search expanding across the nation
Simplified search going national Last fall, AGBeat introduced you to Lovely, the San Francisco rental search startup with big plans and were named two short months later to the 60 Genius Brands to watch in 2012 list, and so far they have not disappointed, today secretly adding to their websites the names of the five cities they are about to ...
Obama housing plan helps its one millionth homeowner
Housing plan helps one million The U.S. Treasury Department reported today that since the Obama administration launched their foreclosure prevention program in 2009, nearly one million homeowners have been given permanent modifications to their mortgages, reducing their monthly payments. The housing plan gives mortgage servicers incentives to modify mortgage loans by cutting interest rates, deferring a portion of the loan ...
Mortgage settlement deal remains stalled, deadline passes
The deadline has passed – no deal At the end of business today, the deadline came and went for the $25 billion civil settlement between the states Attorneys General and major lenders as punishment for bank misdeeds leading up to the housing crash. The original deadline to agree on the settlement terms was originally last Friday, but was pushed back ...
Squatter lives in luxury home for months, now evicted
Adverse possession story comes to a head In the summer of 2011, Kenneth Robinson upset a Dallas neighborhood by walking into an abandoned $330,000 home, filing a $16 document for adverse posession with the county, and refusing to leave, saying he was the rightful owner, leaving police and officials powerless. Robinson became the face of adverse possession this year and the ...
Zillow ends Listings API, pulls FSBOs from Redfin, other sites
Pulling FSBOs Redfin announced today that their site will no longer feature homes for sale by owner (FSBO), beginning Thursday, as Zillow will no longer be sending FSBO and other manually posted listings to be displayed on their site. Redfin is not alone, as this impacts any real estate brokerage, website or service that is featuring listings through Zillow’s Postings ...
New York startup aims to save renters money
RentJolt enters live beta The New York City real estate scene is far different than many other markets in America, with renting being the common option and renters paying brokers out of pocket for services – it’s the wild west of real estate that operates on different rules, although all licensees that carry the Realtor brand are bound by the ...
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