Data and information management

Just days after predicting that this year’s mortgage originations would fall to their lowest level in volume since 2007, the Mortgage Bankers Association is changing its tune—singing at a higher note.

The news that the Federal Housing Administration is going to rev up its pilot distressed asset sale program is just another indication that this market is ready to boom.

Mortgage firms that use the correspondent and wholesale channels to fund loans experienced strong growth in the first quarter, according to preliminary survey information being compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.

Home prices rose 1.8% in March on a sequential basis and 0.6% during the first quarter, according to an index created by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The Census Bureau reported Wednesday that sales of newly built single-family homes rose to a 343,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate in April from a 332,000 rate in March.

Mortgage applications increased by almost 4% for the week ending May 18—thanks to surging refinancings—according to new figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Banks are doing what they can to avoid depressing home prices, by focusing on reducing foreclosures rather than flooding the market with their backlog of properties, according to CoreLogic chief economist Mark Fleming.

Mortgage originations will fall to their lowest level in five years in 2012, according to the latest forecast by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes rose 3.4% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.62 million units.

According to Lender Processing Services’ ‘First Look’ report from its database of nearly 40 million mortgage loans, the month-over-month delinquency rate rose 0.4% in April, bringing the overall delinquency rate of loans 30 or more days past due (but not in foreclosure) to 7.12%.

One of the nation’s largest real estate brokerage firms said home sales were essentially flat in April after a 25% spike in March.

Builders broke ground on more single-family homes in April than expected and the government revised upward its estimate of construction activity in March and February.

Out of all of the SARs filed from depository institutions in 2011, possible mortgage fraud was reported on 92,028 files, compared to only 70,472 the prior year.

Residential lenders funded $462 billion of home mortgages in the first quarter, the industry’s best showing since the fourth quarter of 2010.

Residential home values experienced a meager 0.2% increase in February with the average sales price coming in at $195,000, according to new figures compiled by Lender Processing Services.

Residential lenders issued $36.4 billion of Government National Mortgage Association MBS in April, a 25% spike from the prior month, according to new figures released by the agency.

Mortgage originations will fall to their lowest level in five years in 2012, according to the latest forecast by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Las Vegas-area home sales rose in March to a level not seen in six years.

In the May issue of Origination News, we published our annual ranking of the mortgage industries leading originators by volume. There is also a listing of top originators by units. Christopher Vincent Hussain repeated as the No. 1 originator.

There may be a simple reason why Wells won’t buy mortgages from a certain lender.