Originations

In this roundtable held at the Regional Conference of Mortgage Bankers Associations in Atlantic City, N.J., the hot topic of the day was the new rules of the road coming out of Washington.

Veros believes the five markets which will see the most improvement are: Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana; San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont; Phoenix-Mesa-Scottsdale; San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, Calif.; and Midland, Texas.

House prices rose 0.3% in January from the prior month, according to Lender Processing Services.

Expecting the same employees who have been doing refis the past two years to start doing purchase mortgages well may be unrealistic.

Overcoming fear to live the life we have dreamed of.

The Regional Conference of Mortgage Bankers Associations 2013 was held at the Taj Mahal in Atlantic City March 11 through 14. There were some 1,625 attendees total for both the commercial and residential portions of the show.

As the housing market improves, small and mid-sized builders are finding it harder to acquire and develop lots while their larger brethren are buying up land that they don’t intend to use for two or three years.

Federal Home Loan Bank members participating in the Mortgage Partnership Finance Xtra program originated $6.9 billion in single-family loans in 2012–up nearly 150% from the year prior.

Lenders said they see GSE reform as a way to give the large banks control of the securitization market.

MGIC Investment Corp. remains the Mortgage Industry Equity Composite stock with the most shares changing hands.

Mortgage real estate investment trust Five Oaks Investment Corp., New York, has priced its initial public offering of 4,033,333 shares of common stock at $15 per share.

Real estate appraisal services provider IRR-Residential, in the wake of a restructuring and spin-off from Integra Realty Resources, has changed its name to Accurity Valuation.

Florida’s housing market, often described as the nation’s real estate microcosms, is posting improvements in home values, inventory and sales that indicate the recovery is taking hold.

A growing scarcity of well-located finished lots for builders could temporarily put a damper on new home construction momentum, according to a Fitch report.

The safest bet is to put plans in place that avoid strong incentives to steer a customer to a less appropriate loan.

FHA lenders originated $51.8 billion in purchase mortgage loans during the first four months of fiscal year 2013, compared to $39.5 billion during the same period in FY 2012.

Life company commercial mortgage investments had a return of 7.48% for all of 2012, including 1.85% in the fourth quarter, according to the LifeComps Commercial Mortgage Loan Index.

Mortgage bankers are not too worried about a new housing bubble forming as national real estate values rise by 10% per year.

Kent Conrad, the former Democratic U.S. Senator from North Dakota, has joined the board of Genworth Financial.

The new mortgage banking company that KB Home and Nationstar Mortgage LLC are forming should be up and running by the end of this year.