Mortgages

First Niagara Financial Group promoted Tom Faughnan to become senior director of its residential mortgage business.

As the credit union mortgage business transitions from a refi market to a purchase market, CUs are having to make “hard decisions” about their sales staff.

The preferred stock was issued as part of the compensation for Ocwen’s purchase of Homeward Residential Holdings from WL Ross in October.

Third-quarter earnings from builder Lennar Corp. show its mortgage-related operations were down compared to the same period last year, but its overall net earnings were up.

On a year-over-year basis, FHFA HPI is up 8.8%, but right now it is 9.6% below its peak month of April 2007.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is launching a national campaign to notify homeowners about the benefits the Home Affordable Refinance Program can provide them.

Over the last 12 months, prices rose 12.3% and 12.4% as measured by the 10- and 20-city composites.

Seven tips for mortgage originators to use to source business from high-end home buyers.

Since seller-funded down payment assistance is no longer available, social media sources might be an alternative.

Homes.com said 22 of the nation’s top 100 markets have now seen prices rebound over 100% in July, up from 19 in June.

Investors are worried about when the Federal Reserve will start to taper and the fight in Congress over the debt ceiling.

CitiMortgage is cutting approximately 1,000 positions, mostly in originations and mortgage default functions in its Las Vegas and Irving, Texas, offices.

Pending home sales in California continued to take a hit in August because of rising interest rates, although distressed home sales fell to lows not seen in nearly six years.

Keep Your Home California launched an online Servicer Scorecard that allows distressed borrowers to monitor how their mortgage servicer is working with the state-run program to avoid foreclosure.

Fitch Ratings has assigned Bellwether Enterprise Real Estate Capital a commercial mortgage-backed securities primary servicer rating of CPS3+.

BSI Financial Services received an initial residential mortgage servicing outlook from Fitch Ratings as stable, which is a positive step for the company moving forward.

A pickup in issuance of commercial mortgage-backed securities has yet to affect pricing, according to analysts at JPMorgan.

Barclays’ latest regional housing update report singles out Meritage as the builder with the “most attractive” metropolitan statistical area exposure among homebuilders.

RES.NET has improved its technology to help make the resale transaction process more expedient and simple for brokerage companies.

The properties had been originally funded through the USDA Rural Development Section 515 program.