Housing industry followers might be suffering from information overload this week.

Just this week:  A monthly housing scorecard was released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development with all sorts of details, including how many borrowers have received loan modifications under a federal program, and how many temporary loan modifications have been canceled.

Then there was a national report on May home sales, which declined from the previous month, while a local report from The Warren Group showed that home sales continued to rise in May.

That was followed by report that sales of newly built homes fell to the lowest level on record.

Then, Fannie Mae said it was going to prevent distressed homeowners who walked away from their mortgages, the so-called strategic defaulters, from getting new home loans for seven years.  Just for the record, I don’t really see why homeowners think it’s ok to stop paying their mortgages because the value of their homes has fallen. I’m sure the mortgage documents they signed didn’t say I’ll pay this monthly amount only if the home value doesn’t fall below X amount.

But perhaps my favorite report was the one from a treasury official which showed that prison inmates were filing and receiving homebuyer tax credits.  Apparently, thousands of tax filers have fraudulently claimed the tax credit.

The story is even more infuriating after hearing that some buyers who are legitimately trying to claim the credit are running into roadblocks. A Boston Herald story highlights the case of a couple in Western Massachusetts that is having trouble getting the credit. The Herald reports that local attorneys and accounts are seeing delays in tax credit payments because the IRS is trying to weed out fraudulent claims.

More bad news for homeowners who’ve been struggling with mortgage payments: Fitch Ratings released a report yesterday predicting that most homeowners who’ve received a loan modification under the federal Home Affordable Modification Program, or HAMP, will default within a year.

The redefault rate within a year is likely to be 65 percent to 75 percent under HAMP for loans that aren’t back by the federal government, Fitch said.

That’s disappointing to hear, especially since a lot of borrowers spend months, sometimes more than year, trying to secure a loan modification. Experts say that homeowners are saddled with too much other debt – including credit card debt – and can’t keep up with mortgage payment even when they’re reduced.

The news comes as The Warren Group reports that foreclosures in Massachusetts more than doubled in May compared to a year earlier. In the first five months of 2010, 6,107 foreclosure deeds have been filed. That’s a 48 percent jump from a year earlier.

The only bright spot, if you can call it that, is that the number of foreclosures that banks have started so far this year hasn’t spiked. A total of 11,118 petitions to foreclose have been filed by lenders from January through May, which is up about 1.3 percent from 10,978 last year.

Summer is quickly sneaking up, and people with dreams of vacationing with the rich and famous and all sorts of VIPS are snatching up properties on swanky Nantucket.

 Sales of single-family homes have more than doubled on the island in the first four months of the year, compared to a year earlier. There were 39 single-family home sales transactions recorded from January through April, up from 17 a year ago.

But sales have declined significantly since the market peak in 2005, when 62 single-family homes sold in the first four months of the year, according to data from The Warren Group.

Prices have also eased a bit, according to local real estate brokers, although you wouldn’t know it from some recent transactions. Just last month, a compound on Hinckley Lane in the Cliff area traded for $5.75 million. Another home, a five-bedroom Colonial with three-bedroom guest cottage at Medouie Creek Road, actually was foreclosed on by JP Morgan Chase. The bank took it back at auction for more than $5.7 million. The property had been purchased in 2002 for $3.2 million, and was listed for sale four years ago for almost $7.5 million.

Brokers like to say that the island’s residential real estate market is driven by discretionary sales and second-home purchases – meaning that owners of vacation homes don’t have to sell because they don’t need to move off the island for a job or lifestyle change and buyers generally don’t have to buy. The market is somewhat insulated from the housing market on the mainland.

But the recent economic downturn affected even the affluent, seeming untouchable, homeowners. It made selling a necessity for some homeowners who lost well-paying jobs, and buying became a luxury that many could no longer afford.