Origination

With the 2010 revisions to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act requiring lenders to provide mortgage and closing services information to consumers in an accurate and timely manner, ClosingCorp of La Jolla, Calif., has created a new pricing tool for title companies and settlement service providers to put on their own websites.

Mortgage rates in Freddie Mac's weekly survey have come in at or near record lows again this week.

Starting today, your appraisals are going to look a bit different. Basically, the agencies have been warning us for the last year or so that they were creating a uniform set of "codes" that will be used by all appraisers nationwide.

Appraisers will be following new procedures for gathering and reporting property data starting Thursday, as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac move forward with the appraisal requirements of their Uniform Mortgage Data Program.

Icon Residential, Irvine, Calif., recently pulled the plug on its plans to enter the correspondent lending channel, laying off roughly 120 full-time employees at the unit and a related division.

Fannie Mae bought $39.4 billion of home mortgages from its seller/servicers in July, a 5% decline from the previous month. But compared to the same month a year ago the GSE's acquisitions fell 26%.

Home prices rose in July for the fourth consecutive month, according to CoreLogic, which tracks the market through its house price index.

Bank of America is hiring financial advisors, including mortgage specialists, as it expands its network of high tech "specialty stores" for customers with $50,000 to $250,000 in "investable assets."

A few years back there was a growing school of thought—and factual proof—that the entire mortgage banking landscape would be 90% controlled by just five lenders and servicers, mostly megabanks.But that was before the bubble burst on housing and foreclosures soared to record levels.

Kinecta Federal Credit Union has launched a jumbo loan program for high net worth borrowers that allows them to use a percentage of their assets in certain other financial products to help them qualify for hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages from $417,001 to $3 million in size.