Origination

Old Republic International Corp., Chicago, is planning to merge its private mortgage insurance business with another unit that is also in run-off, the consumer credit indemnity division and split them off from the parent company. The combination will operate under the name Republic Financial Indemnity Group Inc.

The average weekly rate for a 30-year fixed rate mortgage in Freddie Mac's survey rose above 4% for the first time since October of last year.

The nation's megabanks -- Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America -- are cleaning up on the HARP 2.0 program, earning massive profits on the origination of these high LTV refinancings, according to a new report from Amherst Securities Group.

Any insight into the future of the mortgage industry given by the speakers at the Regional Conference of Mortgage Bankers Associations in Atlantic City was hazy at best. Because almost every speaker at the first morning's general session agreed that if there is any one word defining what it is happening in the business right now it is uncertainty.

The latest round of vendor consolidation in the LOS sector saw three mortgage technology heavy hitters acquire competing or complementary software developers in a series of moves that shook up the landscape of origination technology.

If you are like me and regularly post on Facebook, Twitter, blog pages, etc., there are some days that I have "brain farts," days where I simply can't think of anything to post.

As Chris Larsen steps aside as Prosper Marketplace Inc.'s chief executive, the company — and the rest of the peer-to-peer lending industry Larsen helped create — has the opportunity to change its course and possibly even merge with one of the very banks it originally sought to displace.

The Federal Housing Administration has revamped a little used program for refinancing underwater conventional loans, and extended its "short refinance" program until the end of 2014.

Sales of existing homes slipped 1% in February from the prior month on a seasonally adjusted basis, but rose 10% on a non-adjusted basis, according to new sales figures released Wednesday morning.

The title industry reported a drop of 1.5% in premiums written in 2011 over 2010, with the fourth quarter seeing a year-over-year decline of 6.5%, the American Land Title Association reported.