Data and information management

The next four markets on the OwnAmerica list are in Texas.

A decline in the number of interest-only loan products available in the marketplace has contributed to the first drop in four months in the Mortgage Credit Availability Index.

Thirty-year conventional prepayment speeds got 22% slower than they were the previous month, including some declines in Home Affordable Refinance Program pools.

Nonbank mortgage lenders added 300 employees to their payrolls in July despite rising mortgage rates and falling refinancing activity.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.57% for the week ending Sept. 5, up from 4.51% the previous week.

Barry Habib, chief market strategist for Residential Finance, examines the Mortgage Bankers Association Purchase Applications index as well as the July CoreLogic home price report.

Australian billionaire James Packer bought 9.4% of Zillow Inc., becoming the second-biggest shareholder in the U.S. real estate website.

The premium buyers are paying for newly constructed houses is abnormally high.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency reported that total refinancings by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seller/servicers fell 8.8% from the first quarter to 1.28 million in the second quarter.

The August delinquency rate for U.S. commercial real estate loans in CMBS dropped for the third straight month.

Economists at Wells Fargo Securities are sticking with their theory that extremely wet weather in the South is responsible for the recent slowdown in new home construction and sales.

The Eleventh Federal Home Loan District Cost of Funds Index was virtually flat in July compared with June at 0.954%.

Commitments to purchase new mortgages fell 16% from June to $62.4 billion in July—the lowest level since April 2012.

Nationally, house prices jumped 1.8% in July from the prior month, according to the CoreLogic house price index.

Census Bureau data shows that builders started 19,000 single-family attached houses in the quarter, up from 18,000 for the April-May-June period in 2012.

For the second quarter of 2013, total title insurance premiums written were $3.34 billion, compared with $2.77 billion in 2Q12.

U.S. residential properties sold at an estimated annualized pace of 5.5 million in July, which is up 11% from last year.

Approximately 12.2 million homeowners with a mortgage were in negative equity at the end of the second quarter.

There was a 10 basis point decrease in the price of whole loans securing commercial mortgage-backed securities in July.

The Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey finds the average rate for the 30-year fixed rate loan is still 92 bps higher than it was for the same week last year.