Origination

The recently acquired Generations Bank in the Kansas City area has been officially renamed The Federal Savings Bank and so far hired 20 new mortgage professionals and half a dozen operations staff for its new mortgage unit.

NovaStar Financial Inc., Kansas City, Mo., has completed its recapitalization program as its Series C Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Stock has been exchanged for nearly 44 million newly issued shares of its common stock and $1.6 million in cash.

Housing prices rose 0.7% in April, snapping eight straight months of declines, as home values increased in 13 of the 20 cities in the Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller house price index.

Stuck between a rock and a hard place, some mortgage lenders are choosing to relax underwriting requirements ever so slightly to offset a dramatic drop in loan origination volumes.

WASHINGTON—Small mortgage banking companies got crushed in the first quarter between falling loan volumes and rising expenses.

If there is anyone thing marketers seek to do in their programs about their company, its product and/or services, is to create buzz. The social media can create buzz much faster than any other method.But as social media expert Randall Craig elaborates, creating buzz is a game of "follow the leader."

On a day when the stock market soared upwards, the three stand-alone mortgage insurers all saw their stock price drop. This is in apparent reaction to an article that appeared over the weekend in another publication.

Barclays Capital reports that June commercial mortgage-backed securities conduit liquidations hit the new high of more than 450 deals worth nearly $1.9 billion, an increase that bodes well for special servicers of these portfolios.

A state appellate court in New York rejected the shield of the federal tax exemption for federally chartered credit unions and upheld a lower court ruling that Hudson Valley FCU and all of the state's federally chartered credit unions are liable for millions of dollars in New York State mortgage recording taxes.

There are a number of new rules and regulations relating to mortgage lending that credit unions must track closely, or risk penalties, fines, or even civil or criminal liability.