Origination

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.

Redwood Trust said it is currently seeing a very robust pipeline of potential CMBS transactions.

Just imagine what a 10 basis point guarantee fee hike would do to the market for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. Well, apparently, the mortgage insurance industry has done quite a bit of imagining and has managed to get language added to the payroll tax bill that seeks parity between g-fee hikes for Fannie/Freddie, and GNMA.

CHICAGO - Good training comes from having good recruiting practices, declared one panelist at the "Best Practices in Sales Training" session at the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention here.