Mortgages

“I would never stoop so low as to spy on my competition,” one loan officer said to me recently. Why not? Don’t think for a minute that they don’t know what you are up to.

Loan origination system vendor Mortgage Builder said it will acquire GCC Servicing Systems, the mortgage servicing technology vendor that it was spun off from in 1998.

Mortgage firms that use the correspondent and wholesale channels to fund loans experienced strong growth in the first quarter, according to preliminary survey information being compiled by National Mortgage News and the Quarterly Data Report.

In a buyer’s market, the smallest of processing hiccups can cause a lender to lose a potential borrower, which is why lenders place a premium on developing new digital delivery strategies.

With all the complexities involved in the management of distressed real estate assets, Wingspan Portfolio Advisors president Steven Horne said his company finds a literal overview of all of them is useful in drawing up strategies for handling the work.

WarehouseOne of Trenton, N.J., which has been in business since 1998, is demanding that a troubled lender with a similar-sounding name stop using that name.

Home prices rose 1.8% in March on a sequential basis and 0.6% during the first quarter, according to an index created by the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

The Census Bureau reported Wednesday that sales of newly built single-family homes rose to a 343,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate in April from a 332,000 rate in March.

Nearly two months into the spring homebuying season, there are signs throughout the country that the housing market is making positive strides toward a recovery.

Does anyone in government feel sorry enough for jumbo borrowers that they would design a HARP program to help these (presumably) high net worth individuals take advantage of a 3.5% fixed-rate mortgage?

Mortgage applications increased by almost 4% for the week ending May 18—thanks to surging refinancings—according to new figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Home prices hit bottom in the first quarter, but will remain flat for the rest of this year and into next, according to a new forecast from Bank of America/Merrill Lynch.

Iron Horse Auction Company is conducting an online auction through next weekend selling 100 bank-owned properties in North Carolina and Virginia to investors and prospective homebuyers.

Banks are doing what they can to avoid depressing home prices, by focusing on reducing foreclosures rather than flooding the market with their backlog of properties, according to CoreLogic chief economist Mark Fleming.

Citigroup, a somewhat frequent seller of nonperforming loans, is in the market with a $99 million package of troubled residential mortgages, according to investors that have looked at the package.

Umpqua Holdings in Portland, Ore., continues to ramp up in commercial real estate lending at a time when many other banks are shying away from the sector.

A federal judge this week dismissed portions of the Securities and Exchange Commission's case against two former executives of IndyMac Bank, the now-defunct alt-A giant that was initially started by Countrywide Financial Corp.

The Home Affordable Refinancing Program is not giving perks to the right borrower.

Mortgage originations will fall to their lowest level in five years in 2012, according to the latest forecast by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

I like to set goals. It's a sickness.