Originations

American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., the Coppell, Texas-based firm bought by Wilbur L. Ross Jr. in 2008, soon will be starting a correspondent mortgage origination operation, industry sources said.

Glen A. Messina is the new chief operating officer at PHH Corp., Mount Laurel, N.J., where he will oversee, among other things, the operations of PHH Mortgage.

Roberts Realty Investors, an Atlanta-based publicly traded real estate investment trust that owns multifamily properties, is up for sale. The company has hired Sandler O'Neill + Partners LP to "explore potential strategic alternatives."

Less than one year ago I came before this committee and testified in support of modernizing and reauthorizing the National Flood Insurance Program. Last year, NFIP lapsed three times before the Senate authorized a one-year extension. As you know, that extension expires this September.

I'd like to suggest four targets to add to your list of ethics training recipients if they aren't already included. The first two are high-risk groups often overlooked when developing ethics and values training. The second two are seemingly obvious groups also often overlooked though for entirely different reasons.

Housing permits rose sharply in May in California to their highest level of the year -- but the gain was entirely in the multifamily sector, with single-family production actually falling in the month.

A new study from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and its Tayloe Murphy Center shows that by better serving under-banked consumers, depositories can effectively raise property values.

Residential lenders and investors no longer have to fear steep declines in home prices and mortgage credit should become more available later this year, according to a new report from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.

The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in New York has approved the reorganization plan of Innkeepers USA Trust, a real estate investment trust which filed for Chapter 11 protection in July 2010.

Synovus has created a Senior Housing Group to serve the needs of owners of such properties as convalescent and assisted-living care facilities and nursing homes. William E. Shine joins Synovus as director of corporate banking for specialized healthcare lending.

The CoreLogic Home Price Index for May increased 0.8% over April but declined by 7.4% when compared with May 2010. Take out distressed sales, and year-over-year prices declined by a mere 0.4% when compared with May 2010. That follows a 0.8% year-over-year decline when distressed sales were removed from the equation for April.

Arthur J. Gallagher & Co., an insurance brokerage based in Itasca, Ill., has bought Mortgage Insurance Agency Inc., Crystal Lake, Ill., a provider of surety bonds, errors & omissions coverage and fidelity bonds for mortgage brokers and mortgage bankers nationwide. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Document preparation vendor DocuTech will begin offering electronic doc management services through a partnership with provider Xerox Mortgage Services.

New notices of default at the nation's private mortgage insurers far outpaced cures in May, ending a run of three months where the opposite was the case, according to the latest data from the Mortgage Insurance Cos. of America.

Average mortgage rates remained relatively steady in the latest week tracked by Freddie Mac, which ended June 30.

Most lenders and servicers likely may pay no mind to the work of the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization’s contingent of dedicated volunteers. They don’t care how the technology works; they just want it to work.

Here's one for those of you who think that the mail and e-mail will do your selling for you. It's a call I received.

May home sales in Massachusetts dropped more than 25% from the prior year but median prices increased after five months of decreases, according to The Warren Group.

There are approximately 4.1 million loans nationwide that are 90 days delinquent or in foreclosure, according to Lender Processing Services’ May Mortgage Monitor report.

KB Home, Los Angeles, has made MetLife Home Loans its preferred mortgage lender, effective June 27. The homebuilder's previous mortgage joint venture relationship with Bank of America stopped accepting new loan applications as of June 26, although it will continue to process and close any applications it received.