Article Archive for March 2010
By Carrie Bay | 03/31/2010
Economic factors, such as unemployment and consumers' controlled spending, continue to weigh heavy on the commercial real estate sector and drag down fundamentals, but the rate of deterioration appears to be moderating, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) said Wednesday.
The volume of commercial property sales picked up at the end of last year and prices are beginning to show stabilization, but MBA also noted that vacancy rates continue to increase across all property types and delinquencies are still climbing.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/31/2010
Retreat Capital Management Group, a Lake Forest, California-based provider of loss mitigation and portfolio management products, announced Tuesday that it is now offering property preservation services to its clients through a partnership with Elevate Property Services, based in Santa Fe Springs, California.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/31/2010
Altisource Portfolio Solutions announced Tuesday that First Associates, Inc. has implemented its REALRemit solution, an automated e-commerce invoicing and borrower payment portal, to manage accounts payable and borrower loan payments.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/31/2010
MRG Document Technologies (MRG), a Dallas-based provider of mortgage document preparation and compliance technology to lenders across the nation, recently announced that it has been named a RegulatorConnect certified partner by ComplianceEase, a San Francisco-based provider of intelligent business solutions to the financial services industry.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/31/2010
In its 12-month home price forecast issued Wednesday, Veros Real Estate Solutions said it had "continued bad news for Florida."
Markets in the Sunshine State claimed the top five spots on the company's list of areas where prices are expected to drop the most over the next year.
One of the other big bust states - California - shows more promise, according to Veros' analysis. The Golden State is home to three of the five markets the company expects to post the strongest price gains over the next 12 months.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/31/2010
New data from HOPE NOW shows that servicers completed more than 95,000 loan modifications through their own proprietary programs in February. That's almost double the 52,000 modifications finalized under the government's Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) during the same month. The report also showed declines in the number of 60-day delinquencies and foreclosure starts and sales.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/31/2010
The government recently ramped up its efforts to help at-risk borrowers, but according to a recent opinion poll by Destin, Florida-based Housing Predictor, that's not what the majority of people want. Despite the impact it would have on the U.S. economy, 78 percent of those polled said they want the government to let home foreclosures run their course instead of making efforts to stop the crisis.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/31/2010
The Federal Reserve's role as buttress and benefactor of the nation's mortgage debt market came to an end Wednesday. Since November 2008, the central bank has been the market's No. 1 patron, buying up $1.25 trillion in mortgage-backed securities.
Fears have surfaced that the Fed's exit could leave a gaping hole in the secondary market, causing interest rates for home loans to spike and buyer demand to dwindle. But analysts say private investors will pick up the slack and rates will rise less than a quarter of a percentage point over the next quarter.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/31/2010
Following two consecutive weeks of decreased activity, mortgage application volume increased 1.3 percent for the week ending March 26, 2010, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday. The jump in application volume was the result of an overwhelming increase in purchase activity.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/31/2010
Although the real estate market still has a long way to go on the road to recovery, confidence in the market is increasing, according to the March 2010 Real Estate Confidence Index (RECI) survey released by Point2 Technologies, a Web-based inventory management and online marketing software developer.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/31/2010
The Wolf Firm, an AV-rated law firm serving the financial services community in California, recently announced the expansion of its litigation department and welcomed two new attorneys to its team: Joseph J. Nardulli, lead trial counsel, and Chanel L. Oldham, associate litigation attorney.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/31/2010
Fannie Mae has extended its contract with Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative as a preferred investor. The organization says continuing its preferred investor relationship with Fannie ensures that cooperative members selling to the GSE have access to more competitive pricing and technology than they would working with Fannie Mae independently.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/30/2010
Countdown To Buy, a next generation online real estate marketplace, announced Tuesday that it successfully generated accepted offers on foreclosed properties in 30 days or less. The properties were located in Dallas and were listed on the company's Web site on March 5, 2010. And before the month's end, offers have already been accepted.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/30/2010
Florida has been aptly dubbed one of the nation's foreclosure hotspots, and its courts have a wall of foreclosure cases to back up that claim. The backlog has gotten so bad, that it's pushed the Florida State Courts Administration to ask legislators for $9.6 million to bring in additional case managers and judges to help clear the still-growing glut of case files. The state's court administrators estimate that there are currently 500,000 pending foreclosure cases. Local judges say "the numbers are just overwhelming."
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/30/2010
Knight Capital Group, Inc., a global financial services firm based in Jersey City, New Jersey, announced Tuesday that it has agreed to acquire Urban Financial Group, Inc., a privately-held, independent mortgage company based in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The acquisition will provide Knight's fixed income team with a captive new issue of HECM mortgage-backed securities (HMBS) for institutional clients.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/30/2010
In an announcement Tuesday, Real Estate Disposition Corporation (REDC) said foreclosure sales for its lending and banking clients soared this past week in nationwide live and online auctions, which generated $47.4 million in sales on 625 foreclosed residential properties, commercial properties, and notes.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/30/2010
Federal regulators are warning that by the end of 2010, half of all commercial real estate mortgages will be underwater. Their biggest concern is that most of these souring loans are concentrated in mid-sized banks, making them especially vulnerable to failure. The Treasury secretary, though, says commercial real estate is a problem that can be managed, and news from the field supports his assumption, as lenders appear to be moving more aggressively to modify commercial mortgages and avert another default tsunami.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/30/2010
Various HOPE NOW servicers, including Bank of America, Chase, Citi, GMAC, Suntrust, Wells Fargo, and others, assisted more than 1,300 troubled borrowers during three homeownership preservation events held across the Pacific Northwest last week. According to HOPE NOW, 532 families attended the first of the three events, which was held in Portland, Oregon on March 23. And the two-day event in Bellevue, Washington on March 25 and March 26 saw an additional 796 homeowners.
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By Carrie Bay | 03/30/2010
The Treasury Market Practices Group (TMPG), an organization created by the New York Federal Reserve to advise on the trading of Treasury bonds, announced Tuesday that it is expanding its scope to include government agency debt - such as that from mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - and agency mortgage-backed securities (MBS). There is speculation that the organization's extended reach is in response to an increase in unresolved mortgage deals and secondary market trades.
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By Brittany Dunn | 03/30/2010
As part of an effort to provide technology solutions for RESPA challenges, Caliber Funding, LLC, a national wholesale and retail lender based in Tucson, Arizona, has launched an originator forms feature on its proprietary software system, H2Online. The new feature provides fully-completed, signature-ready documents with a single click, the company said.
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