The Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, Wisconsin has launched a mediation program designed to help distressed borrowers avoid bank REO properties. The mediation program is available for lenders and distressed homeowners who are at risk of foreclosures. The foreclosure prevention program is funded with money that came from the successful case against the mortgage lending company, Countrywide Financial Corp.

New York’s repo homes fraud prevention effort has made progress with the arrest of Anita Bareja, a former loan officer at EFI Capital Corp., a mortgage brokerage firm. She is charged with grand larceny, first-degree business record falsification, defrauding scheme and possession of forged instruments.

Continued lender actions to foreclose houses pushed down home prices in March in the Washington, D.C. capital region, based on the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index published on Tuesday. Home price levels in the region declined by 8.4 percent compared to price levels in March 2008.

A rising number of the more than two million American homeowners threatened with foreclosure in 2009 are actively finding foreclosure help and fighting their lenders to save their homes.

Regions that were initially protected from the effects of the nationwide housing collapse because of their high-tech industries are now suffering the economic difficulties brought about by loads of foreclosure list inventories.

Direct-to-consumer Federal Housing Administration (FHA) lender, Lend America has launched the first phase of its national advertising campaign designed to educate troubled homeowners facing foreclosed homes HUD about the Obama Administration’s HOPE for Homeowners (H4) foreclosure rescue program.

The Hope for Homeowners loan refinancing program which was launched by the Bush administration in October last year has been expanded by President Obama on Wednesday to save more houses from becoming foreclosed homes.

The real estate industry experts were given a ray of hope that the housing market may be bottoming when April 2009 market data showed a slight increase in the construction activity at single-family homes despite a jump also in the number of bank foreclosed home.

Florida foreclosure courts have found a way to quickly lessen the backlogs of bank foreclosed cases. The method, called rocket docket allows foreclosure courts to schedule as many as 250 hearings daily where homeowners usually never showed up.

What years of lobbying by consumer groups have not accomplished; the devastating effects of foreclosed home auction events have easily achieved.