A Long Island, N.Y., mortgage broker will pay Virginia a $7,500 fine for illegal mailings with a potentially alarming “First Notice” naming homeowners and advising them of a federal assistance program for people with adjustable-rate mortgages. The broker, Mortgage Concepts Funding Inc., did not admit violating Virginia regulations about misleading advertising when settling the case.

The Obama administration is unveiling a new program to provide support to state and local housing agencies to provide help to thousands of home buyers and renters.

As Virginians race to lock in record low interest rates on mortgages, some are stumbling because they thought they were locking in rates when they weren’t. The State Corporation Commission’s Bureau of Financial Institutions is reporting getting more complaints than the usual handful about lock-in agreements, with 11 complaints about them so far this year. Lock-in agreements promise to set a particular interest rate on a loan before the loan is closed.

If you thought you missed out on the best mortgage interest rates this year, take note. Yesterday, the interest rate on a 30-year fixed rate loan dropped to its lowest point since last spring. It was 4.875 percent with 1 origination point, or 1 percent of the total loan amount, down from 5 percent a week ago, according to the Mortgage Market Guide.

It all comes down to details: The success of the federal government’s attempts to keep homeowners from defaulting on their mortgages appears to hinge on small things such as a servicer not losing a customer’s documentation. That’s the message that community groups gave yesterday to three members of the oversight panel for the Troubled Asset Relief Program. At a hearing in Philadelphia, the panel looked at whether the Obama administration’s plan to attack the mortgage crisis has led to more affordable mortgages for struggling homeowners.

Rates for 30-year home loans edged up this week, but remain close to record lows reached over the spring.

About 9 percent of Virginia homeowners with a mortgage are either late making their monthly payments or already in foreclosure, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported yesterday. Nationally, 13.16 percent of homeowners were in similar predicaments as of the end of June, the association said. The 8.86 percent delinquency rate for mortgage loans in the U.S. at the end of the second quarter broke a record set in the previous quarter.

Freddie Mac eschews federal aid as loss narrows Freddie Mac escaped the second fiscal quarter without asking the government for any new financial aid, but still expects to need more federal help in the future. The government-controlled mortgage finance company yesterday posted a quarterly loss of $374 million, or 11 cents a share, including $1.1 billion in dividends paid to the government.

Billions of dollars the government is spending to help financially pressed homeowners avert foreclosure are passing through—and enriching—companies accused of preying on the people they’re supposed to help, an Associated Press investigation has found. The companies, known as mortgage servicers, are middlemen who collect monthly payments from homeowners and funnel the money to the banks or investors who hold the loans. As the only link between borrowers and lenders, they’re in the best position to rework the terms of loans under the government’s $50 billion mortgage-modification program. The servicers are paid by the government if the changes keep homeowners from falling behind on payments for at least three months.

Lenders such as Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo and Co. are among those that have lagged behind government expectations in helping struggling homeowners with mortgages. The government’s $50 billion program to ease the mortgage crisis is helping only 9 percent of eligible borrowers who have seen their mortgage payments reduced with modified loans.

Even as Americans suffer rising unemployment, foreclosure rates in three states hit hardest by the housing bust — California, Arizona and Florida — stabilized in June, offering hope that the worst of the real estate crisis is over.

Homeowners worried about missing mortgage payments and entering foreclosure may have another option: a loan modification. Despite some signs of stability in the housing market, foreclosures remain a major obstacle to a meaningful recovery. And more borrowers in good standing are likely to miss their mortgage payments as the recession claims more jobs.

Central Virginia Bank is offering a below-market interest rate of 4.363 percent on 30-year fixed-rate mortgage loans up to $534,000. But the rate is available only on the purchase of speculative homes financed by the Powhatan County-based bank, any pre-sold home that will be built on a lot financed by the bank and any bank-owned residential real estate.

Virginia will join a national system in August to register and license mortgage loan originators to cut back on mortgage fraud and to protect consumers. “The public will have the added benefit of knowing that the person has been thoroughly checked out and would be qualified to originate a loan,“ said E. Joseph Face Jr., the state’s banking commissioner.

Claims for its mortgage insurance are climbing, but so, too, are Genworth Financial Inc.‘s efforts to keep people from losing their homes.