Mark Fogarty

Chairing a webinar is like chairing a session on a hot topic at a live meeting. The big difference is you are sitting somewhere alone in a room with the controls all in front of you.

We have been named a finalist for an Azbee Award, for two editorials done in 2011, and also have been named winner of an award from the Native American Journalists Association, again for an editorial from 2011.

It’s fascinating to look under the hood of a particular deal and see all the moving parts that make it possible.

National Mortgage News has won a Native American Journalists Association award for an editorial that took the administration and Congress to task for seesawing widely on the amount of money granted to tribes to support housing.

A multi-agency effort targeting some of the worst housing in the country is a welcome move, but only a start.

One thing you can always count on from Washington—there will be plenty of regulatory activity after a crisis happens rather than before when it might be useful.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Section 184 mortgage is the most successful loan ever to target American Indians.

Not too many life and homeowners insurance firms are foregoing rate increases and rebating money to their insured.

A loss mitigation technique barely on the radar screen five years ago now is holding out hope that servicers can start moving their logjams of delinquent mortgages down the river and start resuming more normal operations.

How many houses would be built if it cost $1 million apiece to build modest single-family homes?

Servicing is rapidly deconsolidating as the top five no longer control more than half the market, while originations, which were consolidating after the crunch as tens of thousands left the mortgage broker business, have at least ceased consolidating.

Credit unions continue their bid to become a real player in the mortgage industry.

The news that the Federal Housing Administration is going to rev up its pilot distressed asset sale program is just another indication that this market is ready to boom.

Given today’s rancorous partisan atmosphere, which has almost shut the Congress down, what measure do you think you could get a 400-0 vote on?

A significant barrier to tribal homeownership may change as the House of Representatives, in a rare show of bipartisan support, has passed the Helping Expedite and Advance Responsible Tribal Homeownership Act without a single dissenting vote.

What does the future hold for the GSEs? Combined agencies? A GSE for nonconforming?

Over the past dozen years, one of the best things I’ve done on the road is to gather top industry officials around me and have a freeform, on-the-record roundtable of industry issues.

Lenders and investors at this week’s secondary market conference in New York were interested in a question that’s been on target for at least the past three years: Where is the nonconforming secondary market? When will it show up again? When should mortgage packagers start their engines?

There was a lot of shock, sadness, and yes, grief here at SourceMedia at the recent passing of Neil Morse. We knew Neil as a gifted mortgage writer, an indefatigable road warrior, a thoroughly professional public relations executive, and finally as a colleague for his work with our conference group. He died way too soon (he was 62). But he had an impressive life.

It's nice to know there's one sector of the mortgage business that's hot. In fact, it may be overheating (does anyone want to say bubble?). It's the agricultural mortgage sector. Now, before you dismiss this niche as insignificant, read this.