Underwriting

More than half of borrowers paid 0.5 points or more to cut their interest rate for the life of the loan, while just 3% chose the short-term option, Black Knight said.

In just the first few weeks of the year at least 10 transactions have taken place.

The private mortgage insurer is purchasing Agents National and Boston National from Incenter, which itself is a unit of Finance of America.

Various affiliated companies participated in the creation of the transaction, including its publicly traded REIT, which owned a significant portion of the mortgages.

Approximately 20 million U.S. residents – the majority of which were Gen Zers – took out their first debt product between the start of 2019 and mid-2022, a TransUnion study found.

The Chicago-based lender will provide up to $8,000 in down payment and closing cost assistance to underserved potential home buyers.

Currently, there's no standard mechanism for lenders to easily access this information.

With Control Your Price loan officers can lower the interest rate by up to 40 basis points on a loan and by 1.25 percentage points across their pipeline.

The shift opens the door for regional banks to increase their aggregation activities, analysts said.

Many industry stakeholders have been watching certain credit measures closely for signs that underwriting is loosening out of concern it could do so excessively, but indicators still show it's historically tight.

The change allows for more accessible financing options for a greater number of listings, but not all of those potential buyers qualify for conforming mortgages, Zillow said.

But at least one trade group said the Federal Housing Finance Agency needs to be careful to avoid restraining innovation and new product development.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said it would heed the recommendation from a report by its Office of the Inspector General released this week.

The final rule also orders the government-sponsored enterprises to give advance notice of new activities to determine if they are subject to these procedures.

The bill will require the agency to codify the use of desktop appraisals.

Lower rates brought some purchasers back to the market in November but activity remains lower than one year ago, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

Back in 2018, Trump Administration officials attempted to have the case dismissed but the federal court system rejected its petitions.

And having a paperless process was an important reason for many in picking their originator, the National Survey of Mortgage Originations found.

Borrowers' affordability concerns drove activity lower than normal seasonality in November would indicate, Black Knight said.

Lenders added jumbo and adjustable rate mortgage products during November, both of which have had lower interest rates than conforming loans, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.