The Obama administration is holding a conference today to discuss ways to overhaul Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, saying that doing so will be important to fixing the country’s broken housing finance system.

The conference will focus on a review of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, the FHA, Ginnie Mae, the Federal Home Loan Banks and the “significant private sector role” in mortgage origination, funding and servicing.

To date, the U.S. Treasury has spent more than $145 billion to keep Fannie and Freddie solvent, after seizing the lending giants in September of 2008, as they teetered on the brink of collapse.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said that the Obama administration wants a “comprehensive reform proposal that protects taxpayers, institutes tough oversight, restores the long-term health of our housing market, and strengthens our nation’s economic recovery.”

According to the Treasury, Fannie, Freddie and other government entities currently guarantee more than 90 percent of new mortgages.

KnowYourOptions.com is the new Fannie Mae website launched last week to help distressed borrowers understand more about mortgage financing and prepare them for dealing with lenders in the foreclosure process.

Available in both English and Spanish, the new site aims to help struggling homeowners find alternatives to foreclosure. According to a Fannie Mae press release, key features of the site include:

• Interactive Options Finder to help homeowners identify options that might be right for their situation;
• Calculators to help borrowers understand how many of the options work, including refinance, repayment, forbearance, and modification;
• Videos featuring real homeowners discussing how they received help and housing counselors providing advice;
• A virtual assistant to walk homeowners through key areas of the site; and
• Next steps and helpful forms, including a financial checklist and contact log to help borrowers be prepared when contacting their mortgage company or housing counselor.

The site also provides details about Fannie Mae’s Deed-for Lease program, which gives borrowers the option to remain in their home by becoming renters.

Fannie Mae has relaxed the limit of 30 REO listings per broker from any one Fannie Mae source, according to a report from REO Insider.

In June, Fannie imposed a strict limit of 30 REO listings per broker at any one time, and imposed a 25-mile restriction as well. The new rules elicited an immediate response from NAR and Keller Williams Realty.

In a letter to the president of Fannie Mae, Mark Willis, Keller Williams CEO, said that the REO listings limitation “will impede the objectives of both Fannie Mae and the real estate professionals who have invested heavily in people and systems to efficiently move REO properties. Clearly, the REO arena is an extremely specialized field, requiring dedicated professionals who possess distinct expertise and sufficient financial and organizational resources.”

Apparently, Fannie agreed and said it would approve special exceptions to the limit. Fannie also made the clarification that a broker could have 30 REO listings directly from Fannie Mae and take on additional listings from outsourcers without the need for approval from Fannie.

Bloomberg Businessweek has listed the top 10 markets that will lead the housing market recovery by early 2014 from data provided by Fiserv Case-Shiller Indexes and Moody’s Economy.com.

The housing forecast is based on factors that include income growth, unemployment rates, demographic trends, construction costs and foreclosure rates. There were 384 markets surveyed, and the Top 10 include:

1. Bremerton-Silverdale, WA (44.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

2. Bend, OR (33.6 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

3. Detroit-Livonia-Dearborn, MI (33.1 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

4. Napa, CA (31.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

5. Carson City, NV (31.6 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

6. Panama City-Lynn Haven-Panama City Beach, FL (26.9 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

7. Flagstaff, AZ (26 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

8. Santa Fe, NM (25.8 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

9. Cheyenne, WY (23.7 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

10. Anchorage, AK (20 percent price increase from 2010 to 2014)

CNNMoney.com reports that several condo markets in the U.S. are seeing units priced “lower than a Toyota Corolla”, at or even below $25,000 in nice neighborhoods.

Median home prices have fallen about 23 percent during the housing market collapse, but condo prices have suffered even more. According to NAR, nationwide condo prices have fallen about 25 percent since 2007.

NAR reports that in Sacramento, condo prices have plummeted by 59% from where they stood in 2007. In Vegas, where there are more than 200 condos listed for less than $30,000, median prices for condos have fallen by 66 percent.

Most of the condos mentioned in the report are available because of foreclosure or a short sale.

An Aug. 5 New York Times article noted that Asians are particularly active in U.S. residential real estate markets, including condominiums. One Hong Kong-based financier was quoted as saying that it is a highly opportune time to buy in the U.S., especially in cities like New York and Los Angeles where many travel several times a year on business.

NAR says that buyers from Hong Kong and China are the fourth most active group buying residential real estate in the U.S., behind Canada, Mexico and the UK. Foreign investment in U.S. residential real estate for a one-year period ending in March, 2010 totaled $907 billion.

In early July, ForeclosureRadar, the online service that provides market information on foreclosures in California, Arizona, Nevada, Oregon and Washington state, released an iPhone app to make all its information available to subscribers in a mobile format.

Now Foreclosure Radar has released another technology tool: an alert service that sends an email or text to update subscribers on the status of foreclosure proceedings or auction sales in each of the five states it covers.

Subscribers can customize the alerts to get as much or as little information as they want. It also allows them to save and receive updates on the status of individual properties. Users can search by foreclosure stage, zip code, property type and a number of different parameters.

The alert service is free for monthly subscribers, and an “advanced alert” service that provides real-time alerts, auction bid monitoring and other premium features not included in the free service is available for $79.95/month.

The California Department of Real Estate (DRE) said that it revoked a record number of real estate licenses over the past year – a total of 633, for a 10 percent increase over the previous year.

For its fiscal year ended June 30, DRE also said that it suspended another 163 real estate licenses and had 90 licenses that were surrendered. In addition, the department noted that disciplinary actions have risen 60 percent over the past three years in the state, and that this trend will likely continue. A total of 5,400 investigations have been opened since 2007.

DRE Commissioner Jeff Davi noted that while loan modification scam complaints were most prevalent, the department’s most recent enforcement activity has centered around short sale fraud.

Davi has urged California homebuyers to log on to the department’s website to check out real estate agents and brokers before employing them. The database provides consumers with information on licensed agents and brokers, including records of disciplinary action or license revocation.

The Federal Trade Commission has banned eight mortgage relief and foreclosure prevention marketers from plying their trade and fined them over $23 million for deceptive advertising. The eight individuals involved in three companies – two of them in California — have also been ordered to return over $30 million in fees to fleeced consumers.

The California firms included:

Federal Loan Modification Law Center run by Steven Oscherowitz, which marketed a “federal loan modification program” that charged an upfront fee of $3,000 and promised mortgage mods to distressed homeowners. The settlement order includes a $11.5 million judgment against Oscherowitz, and the FTC continues to pursue five other individuals in connection with this scam.

DirectLender.com aka Loss Mitigation Services, which charged an upfront fee of $5,500 and promised loan modifications. The firm and individuals Dean Shafer, Marion Anthony “Tony” Perry and Bernadette Perry also misrepresented themselves as agents of the consumer’s lending institution. The settlement order imposed a fine of $6.2 million.

A New Jersey company – Hope Now Modifications – and brothers Salvatore and Nicholas Puglia were fined $5.3 million for claims they could provide mortgage modifications and for misrepresenting themselves as affiliated with a free federal homeowner assistance program, the Hope Now Alliance.

To date, the FTC has brought 29 cases against marketers who have falsely promised foreclosure prevention and mortgage modification services.

Foreclosure is worse than death – at least when it comes to home values, according to a new MIT study.

The study done by an MIT economist and researchers from Harvard says that foreclosures reduce home values by an average of 27 percent. Comparatively, a home sold because of an owner’s death only reduces the value by 5-7 percent and a home sold as the result of bankruptcy only drops the value by about 3 percent.

The researchers used data garnered from homes sales in Massachusetts over the past two decades. Their study also showed that the value of homes within 250 feet of a foreclosure sale also drop by about one percent. And, not surprisingly, lower priced neighborhoods experience greater discounts for foreclosure properties – primarily because, researchers said, lenders are incentivized by higher fixed costs of owning the property due to vandalism.

Glimmers of hope for the housing market battle daily with predictions of a double dip. So why hasn’t the housing market recovered yet, four years after the bubble burst? U.S. News & World Report listed these six reasons in this week’s issue:

1. Unemployment. Job growth is key to housing recovery and with the national unemployment rate at 9.5 percent, the jobs just aren’t there yet to support a sustainable recovery for housing.

2. Household contraction. When people lose their jobs and their homes, they tend to move in with family or friends, constricting the number of new households — a key driver of real estate demand.

3. Foreclosures. In May, the housing market had a 8.3 month supply of unsold inventory – a balanced market would have a 6-month or lower supply. With foreclosure rates continuing to rise, it could take two or more years to work through all the excess inventory.

4. Tight credit. Even with historically low interest rates on mortgage, if you don’t have good credit (FICO score of 720 or more), you won’t get a mortgage.

5. Falling prices. Although prices have stabilized somewhat, they are predicted to decline in coming months, further scaring off buyers who don’t want to see their investment lose value.

6. Selling current home. If homeowners can’t sell their existing homes, they can’t buy a new one.