Article Archive for July 2010
By Carrie Bay | 07/30/2010
Real estate data provider Altos Research is taking a very bearish outlook on the housing market.
The company says that ominous shadow inventory of distressed properties hanging over the industry will lock home prices into a downward trajectory for the remainder of this year, with property values starting out 2011 even lower than they were in 2009. Add to that the fact that the pool of viable buyers out there is shrinking, and you've got an equation that Altos says is a sign of real market weakness.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/30/2010
DocuTech Corp, an Idaho Falls, Idaho-based provider of compliance services and documentation technology for the mortgage industry, recently announced that it signed 25 new clients in the first two quarters of this year, marking 14 consecutive quarters of growth for the 19-year-old company. According to DocuTech, lenders look to the company for sophisticated, but not complicated, mortgage document tools that seamlessly integrate with existing loan origination systems, thus enabling mortgage professionals to generate documents locally.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/30/2010
The Federal Reserve has decided to raise the dollar amount of mortgage fees that trigger additional regulatory disclosure requirements under the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) and the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act of 1994 (HOEPA). On Friday, the central bank's board of governors issued an adjustment to the rule, bumping the amount of the fee-based trigger up 2 percent to $592, effective January 1, 2011. Currently that threshold is set at $579.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/30/2010
Fannie Mae has opened a mortgage help center in the Windy City in order to provide counseling and other services for struggling homeowners in the greater metro area with loans owned by the GSE. The new center in Chicago is the second facility and third announced partnership in Fannie Mae's planned series of mortgage help centers across the country. The GSE said it partnered on this initiative with Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, major mortgage servicers, and civic and community leaders from across the region.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/30/2010
The two corporate names linked in recent weeks to high-profile settlements with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over questionable practices related to mortgage investments are teaming up to bring to market the year's third multi-borrower bond backed by commercial real estate. Goldman Sachs and Citigroup are putting together a $788.5 million commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) offering comprised of debt from 48 retail and office properties.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/30/2010
HUD recently announced the availability of $79 million in grants for a broad range of housing counseling programs to help families find and preserve housing.
This represents an increase of $21 million, or 27 percent, over last year's funding. According to HUD, these grants will be awarded competitively to approximately 550 HUD-approved counseling agencies and state housing finance agencies across the nation to help families stave off foreclosure, avoid mortgage scams, and improve their credit scores.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/30/2010
Mortgage rates have hit record lows across the nation, but not as low as the rate being offered through a new program in West Virginia. According to a recent announcement by the state's governor, the West Virginia Housing Development Fund has launched a new mortgage program for West Virginia families that includes a 30-year loan at a fixed rate of approximately 3.5 percent. This historically-low rate is achieved as a result of a $35 million bond issue coupled with a special bond refunding by the Housing Development Fund. However, funds for this program are limited.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/30/2010
The percentage of loans 90 or more days past due held by the nation's largest mortgage company has declined for three months in a row.
According to a new monthly summary report released by Fannie Mae on Friday, the GSE's single-family serious delinquency rate dropped 15 basis points to 5.15 percent in May. That follows a decline of 17 basis points in April and 12 basis points in March. The March reading was the first time Fannie's delinquency rate had dropped since March 2007, when it was a mere 0.62 percent.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/30/2010
First American National Default Title Services, a division of First American Title Insurance Company, announced this week that it has added two key team members to its trustee servicing and sales divisions.
Cathe Cole-Sherburn has joined the company as SVP of the Trustee Servicing Solutions division (formerly LoanStar Trustee Services). Milt Baker has been appointed SVP of the Western States Trustee Sale Guarantee division.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/29/2010
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday charged Citigroup Inc. with misleading investors about the company's exposure to subprime mortgage-related assets. The SEC also charged former CFO Gary Crittenden and Arthur Tildesley, Jr., currently the head of cross marketing at Citigroup, for their roles in causing the company to falsely state in an SEC filing that its subprime exposure was a quarter of what it really was in 2007, just as the mortgage market was rapidly deteriorating.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/29/2010
Despite recent increases in a number of the industry's home price measurements, and even an uptick in the company's own index of residential property prices, Fiserv Inc. says the gains will be short-lived.
The information technology firm is forecasting home prices to fall by another 4.9 percent over the next 12 months, as unemployment remains high, mortgage rates rise, and markets such as Florida, Arizona, and Nevada add even more distressed properties to their inventories.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/29/2010
Though volume remains low on an absolute level, commercial and multifamily mortgage loan originations seem to be on the journey upward. According to the Quarterly Survey of Commercial/Multifamily Mortgage Bankers Originations released Wednesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association, second quarter 2010 commercial and multifamily mortgage loan originations inched up 1 percent from the same period last year and surged 35 percent from the first quarter of this year.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/29/2010
Fannie Mae is building the "strongest book of business we've seen in the last decade," according to the GSE's president and CEO, Michael Williams.
While tighter underwriting may mean fewer consumers are able to get loans and banks are holding credit close to their chests, Williams says the type of prudent lending that has taken hold in the aftermath of the housing bust is translating into higher quality loans for Fannie Mae - namely plain, old-school mortgages; credit scores of 760; and loan-to-value ratios of 70 percent.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/29/2010
Residential mortgage loan officers at banks, credit unions, and other federally regulated financial institutions are now required to register their names and fingerprints with a national database.
Federal banking regulators approved new rules Wednesday that say all mortgage originators who are employees of both state and federally regulated lenders must meet the requirements of the Secure and Fair Enforcement for Mortgage Licensing Act (S.A.F.E. Act) by the middle of next year.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/29/2010
Even with record-low mortgage rates, many refinancing borrowers are choosing to pay down their loan balances rather than borrow more money. According to a recent report by Freddie Mac, cash-in borrowers - those who reduced their principal balance by paying in additional money at the closing table - represented 22 percent of all borrowers who refinanced during the second quarter, up from 19 percent the previous quarter. This, Freddie said, tied the record for the third highest cash-in share since the GSE began keeping records on refinancing patterns in 1985.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/29/2010
The residential real estate market in Massachusetts seems to be on the mend. According to a recent report by the Warren Group, a provider of real estate data in New England, the Bay State saw year-over-year increases in both sales and prices of single-family homes and condos in June and in the second quarter.
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By Brittany Dunn | 07/29/2010
Mortgage rates continued to slide downward for the week ending July 29, 2010, marking yet another round of record lows, Freddie Mac and Bankrate reported Thursday. According to Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed-rate mortgages averaged 4.54 percent this week, and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages fell to 4 percent. Bankrate said 30-year fixed-rate mortgages came in at 4.71 percent, and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages inched down to 4.17 percent.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/29/2010
David M. Moffett has been named to the board of directors at CIT Group Inc., a century-old middle market business lender that emerged from Chapter 11 just seven months ago after filing for bankruptcy in November 2009.
Moffett served as CEO of Freddie Mac for a very short period during one of the most tumultuous times in the GSE's history, from when it was placed into conservatorship by the federal government in September 2008 to March 2009.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/28/2010
A new report published by RealtyTrac Thursday shows that 75 percent of the nation's largest metro areas posted increases in foreclosure activity during the first half of 2010.
RealtyTrac says it's seeing early signs that foreclosures may have peaked in some hard-hit markets, but with three-quarters of the nation's most populated metros showing continued increases in foreclosure filings, the numbers illustrate just how fragile the housing recovery really is.
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By Carrie Bay | 07/28/2010
The PMI Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the PMI Group, Inc., has awarded a $50,000 grant to the Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) of San Francisco. The grant will support continued funding for CCCS of San Francisco's nationwide mortgage default counseling program and homebuyer education initiatives.
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