People

Sen. Tim Johnson, a former three-term senator and five-term U.S. representative for South Dakota, died after complications from a recent stroke.

Papanii Okai will fill a newly created position of executive vice president of product engineering at Rocket Mortgage.

Stronger than expected numbers for overall U.S. employment additions have diminished lender hopes for steeper rate drops, and industry hiring has been tepid.

Chief capital markets officer William Chang is stepping down "to explore new opportunities within the mortgage banking sector."

Also, Opendoor adds former Fannie Mae president to board, NFM promotes social media influencer and the Mortgage Bankers Association names its new director of member relations.

The successor to Michael Hutchins, who filled the role on an interim basis, guided a well-known bank's real estate business through the financial crisis.

Negotiation of fees has become much more common, but most sellers are still willing to cover the buyer agent commission, at least to some extent, Redfin said.

Other estimates suggest nonbank mortgage employment grew in July as the industry cautiously added staff to handle incremental growth in demand for loans.

In a little over a month, the company's newly appointed chief strategy officer has built out a six-person strong recruiting team.

The new exec is a former CEO of Sagent and Cloudvirga, and worked at Black Knight for over a decade.