With foreclosures rising and regulators eyeing subprime loans as the primary cause, mortgage brokers are calling for an independent government inquiry to determine all the factors contributing to the problem, according to InmanNews.com (subscription required).

Here’s a snip from Joseph Falk, a longtime south Florida broker:

“Before you rush to the judgment that brokers are placing consumers in bad loans and before we impose ‘suitability’ standards, we have to know the cause of problem. Although the consumer advocates blame industry for inappropriate activity, it’s time to study and see (the real) causal factors.”

According to the article, it is widely predicted that as many as 20 percent of all subprime loans funded over the past two years will wind up in foreclosure.

It’s a huge problem that lawmakers and regulators are looking to solve.

If loan requirements are tightened, it would, eforce lenders to ask more questions and make more disclosures, factoring in such eventualities as tax consequences, income forecasts, the borrower’s resale plans, and whether their debt loads are likely to increase.

Whichever path is taken, this is an issue that needs to be resolved as soon as possible to ensure that more homeowners don’t fall into foreclosure.

We’ll continue to monitor this situation as it happens.

When a homeowner falls behind on mortgage payments, the reality of a looming foreclosure filing and bank repossession can cause fear and desperation.

During these trying times, it’s not uncommon for some homeowners to make poor, uninformed decisions and fall victim to foreclosure rescue scams.

Unfortunately, once homeowners are in default and foreclosure proceedings begin it becomes a matter of public record. Armed with this information, crooks often approach these distressed homeowners with bogus or misleading assistance that eventually make bad situations worse.

The Boston Herald recently highlighted such a scheme, which is, ripping through Boston’s poorest neighborhoods.

Here’s a snip:

… a cottage industry of shady small-time speculators has sprung up to target these struggling homeowners. One popular tactic: persuading a beleaguered homeowner faced with foreclosure to “temporarily sign over his home in exchange for financial assistance. You can guess the rest. Another ploy: offering to make some phone calls – to pull a few strings – on behalf of the homeowner with the lender. Of course, all that is needed is a few thousand dollars up front.

Fortunately, the new scam has caught the attention of the Attorney General, according to the article. And, the office has brought two rescue scammers to court and is exploring additional cases.

The Massachusetts example detailed above represents a small slice of this nationwide problem. With the increase in foreclosures across the board, state governments and local authorities are finding it harder and harder to crackdown on each and every rescue scam.

It’s critical that homeowners don’t fall into this trap. Therefore, anyone who sends fliers via mail or knocks on front doors talking about quick and harmless bailout offers should be considered suspicious.

And, always remember that viable resources and options do exist to avoid foreclosure. For starters, fill out this form to speak with a reliable professional.

Most important, however, is to remain as level-headed and as cool as possible.

Good help is out there, it’s just a matter of finding it before bad help finds you.

Last week, the Colorado Division of Housing uncovered potential flaws with national foreclosure data that was reported by RealtyTrac.com, highlighting a problem that has been flying under the radar for the past few years.

According to reports from the North Colorado Business Report and the Rocky Mountain News, RealtyTrac.com in some cases is triple counting foreclosures in the state. It is the primary reason the company incorrectly labeled Colorado with the dubious distinction of being the top state for foreclosures for nine of the past 13 months.

In fairness, Colorado uses a unique system to track its foreclosures.

Here’s a snip from a report contained within the Rocky Mountain News article:

“The Public Trustee data indicates that foreclosure numbers have been exaggerated by some organizations providing foreclosure data on the state. For example, RealtyTrac has provided widely reported foreclosure data stating that in 2006, Colorado experienced 54,747 foreclosures and had a total foreclosure rate of 1 in 33 households. If this is the case, Colorado has experienced an 85 percent increase in foreclosures since 2005, and a large number of counties would be experiencing foreclosure rates worse than 1 in 33 households.”

It’s important to note that RealtyTrac — one of the more reliable data providers on the Web — is not alone in its miscalculations. In fact, the real estate industry is awash in statistics, making it difficult to discern fact from fiction, right from wrong.

In October 2006, Foreclosure.com made a strategic decision to not release monthly foreclosure statistics. Even though we maintain the most accurate nationwide database — a statement supported by prestigious media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal and esteemed organizations such as the Mortgage Bankers Association — we found it unnecessary to compete with the gaggle of so-called online data providers that crop up all the time.

And, it often put our credibility on the line when it was clear to us and anyone who took the time to look that our numbers best reflected the true foreclosure conditions on the ground.

Put simply, we’ve been at this for more than a decade. In fact, we pioneered the practice of releasing monthly foreclosure numbers even before the Internet became such a monster.

Foreclosure.com published numbers as a courtesy to the industry and press at large. Now that the media is saturated with wild and unsubstantiated numbers — doom and gloom, the sky is falling– sells, more than ever before, it validates our decision to take a step back and re-evaluate how to proceed going forward.

Fortunately, the media and local governments have started to scrutinize foreclosure numbers rather than accept them at face value.

We are confident that if more organizations take the time to analyze foreclosure data from online real estate companies, it will soon become clear that Colorado is not and isolated incident — the problem is more widespread.

Proceed with caution.

HomeGain.com, ”a leading provider of online marketing solutions for real estate agents” announced today that it relaunched HomeScout.com, which the company originally acquired back in 2001.

According to a recent press release, the new launch adds instant home values, recent home sales and several real estate listings databases to HomeScout.com.

One of those databases contains foreclosures. And, with the most accurate and up-to-date foreclosure database in the nation, Foreclosure.com is proud to announce that we will provide the listings for HomeScout.com.

Here’s a snip from Jeff Miller, Director of Advertising Products and Sales for HomeGain:

… We have compiled a comprehensive set of real estate listings from multiple partners and sources. Combining HomeGain real estate listings with homes for sale from other top real estate sites creates a more compelling offer for consumers. HomeScout.com makes finding homes for sale on the Internet easier. It also provides additional reach and more highly qualified traffic for subscribing HomeGain real estate agents and partners.

Earlier this week, Freddie Mac — the second-largest provider of funds for home loans in the United States — announced that it would no longer purchase loans with, “a high likelihood of excessive payment shock and possible foreclosure.