Origination

To ease would-be buyers' concerns about the impact of foreclosures that haven't followed the letter of the law (as in the Robo-gate scandal), a Cape Coral, Fla., realty firm is offering free independent title searches prior to closing.

Money talks, at least in Las Vegas, where there have been a total of 101 sales of $1 million homes or more through the third quarter, according to Luxury Homes of Las Vegas.

This has been a brutal year for most home builders. Even the giants of the business have suffered. But not all of them, according to Housing Intelligence, the independent research division of the Hanley Wood publishing company.

Private mortgage insurers had their best month of the year in September in terms of new business. Meanwhile new defaults outpaced cures for the fourth month in a row, but the ratio is much higher than the levels of 12 months ago, according to the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America.

The Government National Mortgage Association has finalized plans to increase the minimum net worth requirement on its MBS issuers to $2.5 million, from $1 million.

If your "why" isn’t big enough, you will not develop the "what" you need to do to succeed; nor will you have the fortitude to bear under the "how" to overcome the obstacles that life and this business have yet to throw your way.

Residential origination fees were a surprise blessing for New York Community Bancorp last quarter, while its bread-and-butter lending to New York apartment building owners was weak at best.

With more borrowers filing legal challenges to foreclosure, many mortgage lenders have turned their back on using MERSCORP Inc., which operates an electronic loan registry, to bring foreclosure actions. Some lenders are even returning to the old-fashioned, paper-based system of physically recording mortgage assignments at county recorder offices to ensure an unbroken chain of title.

The mortgage insurance division of Genworth Financial lost $152 million in the third quarter, much wider than the $116 million loss in last year's third quarter as problems with its Florida book-of-business continued to worsen.

The Federal Housing Administration has rescinded a cap on the combined loan amount of first and second liens that some in the industry considered unnecessarily restrictive.