Origination

You gotta love Betty White. In the movie You Again, released in September, she portrays a high school girl’s grandmother, and in one scene a boy is asking for her granddaughter’s phone number. Of course it’s White’s character who responds with hers.

While existing home sales were better than expected by most in the industry—up 7.6% in August—the numbers are still the weakest seen in 10 years, and housing experts do not expect a speedy recovery.

Origination technology developer Calyx Software acquired Loan-Score Decisioning Systems, Inc., a technology provider whose offerings include a product and pricing engine, an automated underwriting system and eligibility decisioning for Federal Housing Administration mortgages.

Distressed sales contributed to a 9.2% month-to-month climb in California’s resales of detached single-family homes as the median price dropped below the $300,000 mark for the first time since February.

Home values are starting to turn the corner and move in a positive direction, according to the U.S. real estate market forecast from Veros Real Estate Solutions.

Come next year rising rates could lead to significant production declines at several lenders with smaller nonbank firms heading for the exits, predicted Total Mortgage Services president John Walsh.

Sales of existing single-family homes jumped 6.7% in November after falling 2% in October, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Mortgage bankers originated $26.4 billion of Federal Housing Administration-backed loans in November, an 8.2% jump from the prior month, but delinquencies jumped as well.

Mortgage application volume decreased by 18.6% over last week on a seasonally adjusted basis, as refinance activity fell by 24% to its lowest level since the end of April, according to new figures released by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

As we move into the fun and chaos of the Christmas holiday week, things are really busy here at Reverse Mortgage Success while we prepare for our launch of RMS 2.0 as well as on the origination side. Last week I had the opportunity to conduct one of my favorite (and most productive) reverse mortgage marketing strategies. Many of you already know where I'm going with this—you guessed it, I taught a group of Realtors a course on reverse mortgages. And better yet, they got continuing education credit. And even better than that, it cost me zero.