Origination

Mortgage stocks on Tuesday posted gains as the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose almost 300 points, and the yield on the rate-indicative 10-year Treasury rebounded.

It's that time of the year again: one in which financial services columnists wax poetic and ponder the Bailey Building and Loan and how if it existed today (it doesn't really) regulators would sue George Bailey (and Uncle Billy and 'Old Man' Potter since he sat on the board) for fraud to go after the D&O insurance.

Home Savings of America in Little Falls, Minn., has scuttled - for now - its merger with Cornerstone Mortgage after one of the bank's private equity investors backed out of the deal, according to a memo provided to National Mortgage News.

Single-family housing starts rose 2.4% in November on a sequential basis while multifamily starts jumped 32%, according to a new government report.

Fitch Ratings has upgraded its outlook for the title industry to stable from negative, but that is because the weak market conditions expected to affect industry profitability in 2012 are largely reflected in the current ratings.

We've all heard the cliché quote about death and taxes. But for the small business owner (which defines many mortgage company owners), getting ready to do their taxes (and we can skip the cliché about render unto Caesar as well) is something that falls to the bottom of the list as the year ends.

Home sales fell 5.7% in November but prices were up month over month, according to new figures released by RE/MAX.

Fannie Mae's chief economist is warning that the United States has a 40% chance of slipping into a double-dip recession in 2012.

The Senate over the weekend added an increase in FHA premiums to the payroll tax bill, passing the measure by an overwhelming margin of 89-10.

Commercial REIT Vornado Realty Trust has acquired a 49.5% stake in 666 Fifth Ave., a 39-story office building in Manhattan, from the Kushner Cos.