Originations

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has released its Loan Estimate form, which will eventually replace the good faith-estimate disclosure that borrowers receive three days after applying for a mortgage.

While consistency in branding your business and yourself is important, every so often that image could use a makeover. Your image has become out of style or out of date and people no longer respond.

Recent delays in key secondary market regulations are among hurdles holding back the long-awaited return of the jumbo market, which some say is making some progress, but others think is too constricted by the current limits of secondary market outlets to reach a large scale.

Even before the government-controlled Ally Financial threw its mortgage division into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, rumors were circulating this spring that the “bank” end of the company would exit the warehouse lending arena.

As part of its June national housing survey, Fannie Mae found that 35% of consumers expect home values to increase over the coming 12 months.

FHA lenders originated $78.2 billion of purchase mortgages during the first eight months of the current fiscal year, down from $86.3 billion during the same period in FY 2011.

Radian is benefiting from the changing competitive environment in private mortgage insurance as two of its competitors went into run-off in the third quarter last year.

In judicial states, 6.5% of all mortgage loans are in some stage of foreclosure, compared to only 2.5% in states that don’t use the courts to conduct a foreclosure.

Finding qualified loan officers isn’t the problem—it’s finding LOs who can get licensed so they can work for a broker.

Late last week National Mortgages News reported that although mortgage employment was essentially flat in May, that loan brokerage firms have been hiring. But as we report today, a big stumbling block to richer brokerage hiring remains: finding LOs who are licensed and “ready to go.”

Todd Bettin was sentenced to over four years in prison for conspiracy to commit wire fraud in connection with a five-year scheme to divert mortgage payoff funds from clients’ who were closing on 17 Maryland properties.

THIS JUST IN: Is a new subprime lender about to emerge? I know of one industry veteran who hopes to secure financing to originate nonprime low LTV mortgages.

I really don’t see a problem with books in general; however, books that offer sales training and/or guidance are usually too long and complicated, too short, to be effective.

For Richard Weiner, remaining a leading producer at Envoy Mortgage means having to do just as much, if not more, as getting there.

It appears mortgage brokerage firms across the nation are hiring – so says Don Frommeyer, senior vice president of Amtrust Mortgage Funding, Carmel, Ind.

From time to time non-originating branches can be appropriate, however, they are not a "solution" to paying profit to managers who truly want to continue originating loans.

Redfin predicts U.S. home sales in August to increase slightly on a year-over-year basis.

While the scandal surrounding the rigging of the London Interbank Offered Rate is expected to widen, the index is “so ingrained in the financial system” that there’s “little threat to its status as a global interest rate benchmark.

We have been named a finalist for an Azbee Award, for two editorials done in 2011, and also have been named winner of an award from the Native American Journalists Association, again for an editorial from 2011.

In an effort to squeeze out profits in a low-interest rate environment, banks are under increasing pressure to lower underwriting standards, offer new, potentially dangerous products and ignore operational risk.