The National Association of Realtors' (NAR) Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) rose 5.2% to 79.4 based on contracts signed in July from a downwardly revised [read more]
Mariner Real Estate Management LLC (MREM), a unit of Leawood, Kan.-based asset manager Mariner Holdings, has acquired from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) a [read more]
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) published a joint final rule with other federal banking agencies last week informing national banks that [read more]
Farm Credit Bank of Texas (FCBT), a cooperatively owned wholesale funding bank, issued $300 million of perpetual noncumulative preferred stock on Aug. 26. Barclay's Capital [read more]
Title insurance premiums written during the second quarter decreased 8.5% when compared to the same period a year ago, the American Land Title Association (ALTA) [read more]
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) received 173,068 applications in July - a 2.5% increase from June, the FHA reports. For the first time since December [read more]
The Mortgage Bankers Association's (MBA) Market Composite Index for the week ending Aug. 27 increased 2.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis from one week earlier [read more]
Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC)-insured institutions reported a $21.6 billion aggregate profit in the second quarter - the highest quarterly earnings total since the third [read more]
Data through June show that the national home price index rose 4.4% in the second quarter, after having fallen 2.8% in the first quarter, according [read more]
Borrowers must pay off their Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) obligations prior to refinancing, provided the borrowers have sufficient equity, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) instructed [read more]
WORD ON THE STREET: Over the past 20 years, as the banking industry has consolidated into fewer and larger banks, a perennial question has been, [read more]
Selling real estate owned (REO) properties to owner-occupants and buyers who qualify for publicly funded housing programs remains an overarching goal of the government-sponsored enterprises [read more]
REQUIRED READING: If your firm originated loans prior to 2009, you have buybacks and need to know how to defend yourself. Loan buyback demands are [read more]
PERSON THE WEEK: As the mortgage banking industry continues to keep up with the acute changes in regulation and policy - the Dodd-Frank Act, government-sponsored [read more]
BLOG VIEW: Does the U.S. really need a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Probably not, but the Dodd-Frank Act gave us this new bureaucracy, and we [read more]
WORD ON THE STREET: The new Financial Stability Oversight Council is directed to make recommendations to the Federal Reserve's Board of Governors "concerning the establishment [read more]
REQUIRED READING: Today's mortgage lenders fall into one of three categories: those that are growing faster than ever, those that are getting ready to shut [read more]
REQUIRED READING: Try as it might, the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) cannot resolve the shadow inventory alone. With only a fraction of the borrowers [read more]
