Mortgages

New mortgage finance rules are good for lenders, borrowers and investors.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency wants to see if the multifamily businesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can be spun off and privatized.

Vendor ClosingCorp said Thursday it is making available a service that helps credit unions handle good faith estimate disclosures.

Nationstar Mortgage, Lewisville, Texas, is in the hunt for Aurora Loan Services and appears to be the leading bidder at this point, according to investment banking advisors close to the situation.

The new year started off with a bang in the Houston metropolitan area, where home sales were up for the eighth consecutive month in January.

The acting commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration this week blasted news reports that claim Bank of America Corp. was essentially bailing out the agency's mortgage insurance fund.

Woodward Asset Capital has made technological advancements to their two software solutions enabling small banks to have the capability to access these tools to monitor fraudulent activities in the distressed sales marketplace.

A pair of mortgage real estate investment trusts each priced their public offerings Wednesday morning - but at prices below their Tuesday night close.

Sales of existing homes rose 4.3% in January from the prior month as a mild winter and improving economic conditions encouraged buyers, according to figures released Wednesday morning.

The Obama Administration is pushing back against a recent news report that concluded U.S. taxpayers will subsidize the roughly $25 billion mortgage settlement.

Fannie Mae has purposely kept its mouth shut regarding its investment in servicing rights - especially its $74 billion MSR purchase from Bank of America this past fall which cost the GSE about 50 basis points. But its days of being super secretive may be coming to an end.

Britton & Koontz Bank in Natchez, Miss., has been ordered by its regulator to immediately take steps to reduce the level of risk in its real estate loan portfolio.

The nation's new housing commissioner has a message for the mortgage industry: FHA insurance guarantees are falling - and that's a good thing.

Mortgage applications declined by almost 5% on a seasonally adjusted basis for the week ending Feb. 17, as refinancings declined and rates on fixed-rate loans began to increase, according to figures compiled by the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Technology providers are rolling out new updates and products this week at the Mortgage Bankers Association's servicing conference in Orlando.

Joining ranks with 37 other states, South Carolina has outlawed private transfer fees on homes.

There's more "real" in real estate these days, according to the Coldwell Banker brokerage firm.

For every 12 relationships that you systematically market to each year, you can expect two transactions. One will be a direct buyer or seller, and the other will be a referral. Compare that to your marketing efforts towards strangers. He found that for every 50 people that you market to that you don’t know, you can expect one transaction. Which approach makes more sense?

Fed chairman Ben Bernanke called on regulators to "look carefully" at rules that diminish the origination of prudently underwritten mortgages, telling a gathering of homebuilders that the health of the housing market is central to the vitality of the economy as a whole.

I believe that being a baseball or softball umpire (as I've been since 1984) had skills and lessons that very easily translated into the sales process. After all, new umpires are instructed to sell the call through their mannerisms and use of logic on the field.