Mortgage technology

While existing home sales were better than expected by most in the industry, up 7.6% in August, the numbers are still the weakest the industry has seen in 10 years, and housing experts do not expect a speedy recovery.

Facing an unprecedented volume of repossessed homes, asset managers for the mortgage industry are searching for better ways to streamline and expedite the process of selling real estate-owned and managing short sales.

Mortgagebot PowerSite, called by Forrester Research Inc. “the de facto origination tool” for a long list of U.S. banks and credit unions, has received numerous awards. PowerSite is offered on an outsourced, Software-as-a-Service basis. Perennially included in Mortgage Technology’s Top 50 Service Provider list, Mortgagebot has received more MT awards than any other company, such as our Lasting Impact, Synergy and 10X Awards.

Wipro Gallagher Solutions has combined its fully hosted and managed origination system, NetOxygen Cirrus, with the loan processing services from Wipro into a complete end-to-end loan fulfillment and servicing platform.

San Diego-based Taza Corp. is providing new software directly to asset management companies in order to help clients cut out the middleman and directly run their own BPOs through its network of agents.

VirPack not only has improved its end-to-end paperless loan process solution, it will be contributing to a program that replants trees in the country's national and state forests.

Servicers may be missing out on mortgage technology advances of the past few years due to capacity pressures and HAMP compliance challenges.

The Houston and Dallas metro areas are expected to show the strongest home price appreciation over the next year in the most recent update to the U.S. real estate market forecast from Veros Real Estate Solutions.

The LPS Auction Solutions division of Lender Processing Services will conduct an online auction of 26 bank-foreclosed homes located nationwide with a bid deadline of Oct. 18.

There’s a famous saying that “to do two things at once is to do neither.” The problem is that lenders in our industry absolutely must do more than two things at once, like originating profitable loans, maintaining compliance and keeping their customers and business partners happy.

How the industry inadvertently prepared itself for today's market over the past decadeTen years ago, there was no such thing as an iPhone, a Prius, or Facebook.Ten years ago, loan files were made of paper and prices were distributed on rate sheets.

Prior to the introduction of personal computers, cell phones and a variety of additional technology that we currently take for granted, an appraiser’s job was considerably more labor intensive than it is today. The nature of the job has always been hands-on as well as extremely analytical, requiring that the appraiser do as much research and investigation as possible in order to provide the most accurate results.

Dorado Corp. has received a Notice of Allowance from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for the method it created for processing a loan application (including mortgages). The notice means the government is likely to issue a patent.

Online auction house Countdown To Buy, Bethel, Conn., has entered into its first private label deal, signing on Diamante Cabo San Lucas, a high-end golf resort.

Technology provider DataVerify has enhanced its enterprise-wide fraud management platform, DRIVE, to help mortgage lenders identify and avoid potential short sale and property flipping losses.

MERSCORP, Inc. has added a new certified vendor of digital certificates for identification and signatures to its website.

In order to deal with ever-changing regulations at the local, state and federal levels, it is important that lenders be able to stay on top of the changes and, if necessary, to update their systems quickly and accurately to comply with applicable law on their effective dates.

During the height of the mortgage boom, generating origination business all but took care of itself. Rates were low, volumes were high and the greatest challenge lenders faced was simply trying to keep their heads above water amidst a flood of new business.

CoreLogic subsidiary Teletrack Inc., Norcross, Ga., introduced LendOptix, a risk valuation tool that offers borrower payment risk scoring based on credit performance data from Teletrack and other credit reporting databases.

The number of people who believe paperless mortgages could be just a few years away from a 50% penetration of the market has grown in the last two years, according to a survey on the topic that is done roughly every other year.