Mortgages

Home sales in January were lower than a year earlier due to tight inventory and higher home prices, according to Re/Max.

To take advantage of changing customer demographics and preferences, lenders must capitalize on digital technology. At the same time, digital technology should work in conjunction with, not as a replacement for, the loan officer.

Foreclosures and delinquencies may seem like problems from the past, but servicers are still struggling with a massive backlog of distressed loans and a return to normalcy is at least two years away, if not longer.

As a deep freeze grips parts of America in a typically slow season for housing, first-time buyers are flocking to Redfin Corp.'s property tours and classes, signaling their renewed interest in the market.

The housing boom rolling across central Philadelphia showed no signs of weakening last year, but a population exodus could be on the near horizon if little is done to fix the city's schools and tax structure.

Rent prices continue to surge like a red tide in the Tampa Bay area — something few welcome.

Donald Klepper-Smith, chief economist and director of research for New Haven, Conn.-based DataCore Partners, cautioned against reading too much into the decline in home sales when comparing 2014 to 2013.

The Department of Veterans Affairs released a plan to use a 387-acre tract of land in west Los Angeles to help end veteran homelessness in the city.

Builders broke ground on fewer residential construction projects in January as demand for single-family homes cooled from an almost seven-year high, signaling the rebound in housing remains uneven.

National credit default rates accelerated in January from recent lows seen last year.

Mortgage loan application volume dropped sharply for the period ending Feb. 13 as mortgage rates rose to their highest level since the beginning of the year.

Chicago's Federal Home Loan Bank has given Forward Community Investments, a Wisconsin nonprofit, a loan to support the organization's community development endeavors.

Approximately two-thirds of foreign homebuyers during 2014 paid cash for their property.

The North Texas region has been a hub for mortgage servicing for decades, dating back to the oil bust and savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Today, some key players and many smaller ones remain firmly entrenched in the area.

They're called "zombie properties" — dilapidated, abandoned and overgrown with weeds because the lending institutions inheriting them through foreclosure fail to maintain them.

Nationally, the overall denial rate on a conventional loan was 12.4%, Zillow found after studying 2013 data lenders reported under the U.S. Housing Mortgage Disclosure Act.

Zillow Inc.'s quarterly revenue topped estimates and the online real estate marketplace said it anticipates its acquisition of Trulia Inc. will close as early as Tuesday.

One of the culprits in the building and bursting of the nation's housing bubble, the low-down-payment mortgage, is back in favor and readily available at a lender near you.

The Metro Orlando housing market experienced its seasonal cooling-down period in January, with prices and sales down from the previous month.

Delinquencies of new commercial mortgage-backed securities finished January at a post-recession low, according to Fitch Ratings.