Originations

CityView, an institutional investment firm focused on urban real estate, in-city housing, and metropolitan infrastructure based in Los Angeles, has hired Mark Beisswanger as managing director and executive vice president. In his new role, he will be in charge of all asset management for the company's three housing funds and will also seek new opportunities for CityView's investment vehicles.

The latest weekly average primary market rate for a conventional 30-year mortgage has come in 22 basis points higher than the previous week but successive weekly moves are unlikely to be as steep going forward and some refinancing opportunities remain, according to Freddie Mac's chief economist.

New York Community Bancorp Inc., Westbury, N.Y., will rebrand its Cleveland-based residential mortgage banking business as NYCB Mortgage Co. LLC, effective Jan. 3, 2011. The unit was acquired when NYCB picked up failed AmTrust Bank in a Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. transaction in December 2009.

Single-family housing starts jumped almost 7% in November from the prior month to the highest level since April.

Bank of America Corp. has begun potential settlement discussions with large institutional investors who bought MBS that later underperformed, causing losses at these entities, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System this week suspended its mortgage program, citing rising delinquencies and declining usage by its target audience: state workers. The program's administrator is Citigroup.

The American Bankers Association and six other industry trade groups are urging a U.S. district court in Detroit to reject a recent Department of Labor interpretative ruling that certain loan officers are entitled to overtime pay.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, Des Moines, Iowa, is closing its wholesale lending operations center in Concord, Calif., saying it can get better efficiencies of scale by shifting the work to another wholesale loan processing center located in Irvine, Calif.

A score of affordable federally-subsidized rental housing properties will be preserved and renovated under a partnership involving philanthropy, finance institutions and Uncle Sam. Together, the projects are home to more than 2,000 low-income residents.

Rising mortgage rates are starting to take their toll on new residential loan applications, according to figures released by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The holidays are now just a short time away. Many will be traveling to be with family and friends. There are parties with your neighbors and co-workers. Then of course there are the business parties you get dragged to with your spouse and significant other.

The new HECM Saver program is designed for a different kind of borrower than the traditional Home Equity Conversion Mortgage product, declared an executive with one major reverse mortgage lender.Craig Corn, vice president of MetLife’s reverse mortgage division, said, “It was clear that there was a significant segment of the older American population that either dismissed the traditional HECM product outright because of its cost structure, or looked at it but considered than other financing alternatives,” such as home equity loans or lines of credit.

Mortgage positions were upset Tuesday as long-term rates acceleratedtheir climb in the wake of an agreement on an ambitious government stimulus plan -- a rate move that some said could have been worse if the Federal Reserve hadn't indicated it would continue its quantitative easing.

Hudson Realty Capital LLC, in partnership with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., has closed on the purchase of a pool of distressed Southeastern commercial real estate loans with an unpaid principal balance valued at more than $102 million.

The amount of commercial mortgage debt outstanding declined 1.3% between the second and third quarters, as there were fewer construction loans held by banks and thrifts and commercial and multifamily mortgages held in commercial mortgage-backed securities. This is according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's analysis of the Federal Reserve Board Flow of Funds data.

With the government agency that dominates the reverse mortgage space working on moves to address the increase in tax and insurance default concerns there, some players may want to keep an eye on how these affect the market for this product.

When it comes to mortgages, it appears that consumers are not comparison shoppers with 40% accepting the first loan offer made to them, according to a new survey conducted by LendingTree, the online loan exchange.

New Jersey has become the 19th state to restrict the use of private transfer fees which require a percentage of a home's sales price be paid to a private third party each time the property is sold, often for up to 99 years.

There is an opportunity for mortgage originators to connect with their customers via the social media and that is because your competition is dropping the ball on this one.

MELVILLE, NY—Formerly approved loan correspondents will not have access to nonpublic Federal Housing Administration systems, as of Jan. 1, 2011, including FHA Connection. All other lenders need to meet the increased net-worth requirement of $1 million. “That sounds quite significant and it is,” said Joe Amoroso, director of national sales for Real Estate Mortgage Network, one of the largest private wholesalers in the country. “What it’s done is separate the men from the boys in the lender category for people who want to be a true correspondent lender.”