Mortgages

Home prices fell 1.1% in September from the prior month and the outlook for the coming winter months – when sales tend to slow – are anything but positive, according to a new report from CoreLogic.

Consumers continue to be pessimistic about home prices – with many saying that values still have further to fall – but they also believe, overwhelmingly, that now is a good time to buy.

With the mortgage industry hyper-diligent about loan reporting these days, it is turning to technology to bring servicing operations in-house while achieving the same cost efficiencies that traditionally have been achieved via subservicing arrangements.

Democratic Rep. Elijah Cummings is looking for evidence of potential improprieties at a controversial New York law firm that represents banks in foreclosure cases.

A new Urban Land Institute report intending to open a yearlong dialogue about the future of real estate in the changing economy finds a world struggling to adapt to new market realities.

A large and aging pool of nonperforming mortgages continues to hang over the housing market despite loan modifications that have kept the serious delinquency rate from ballooning. However, the pace of loan restructurings has slowed by nearly 40% since last year and there are new fears that loans that have already been modified may default.

For over 60 years, the Rural Housing Service, part of the Department of Agriculture's Rural Development Mission Area, has been supporting the community development needs of rural America.

The mortgage bust has inspired a big wave of rethinking about the value of home owning. The mantra of "the American dream of homeownership" has often been turned into a statement like "not everyone should be a homeowner."

A decision to restore the $729,750 maximum loan limit on government-backed loans likely will be made by House and Senate leaders -- and not the appropriators, according to industry sources following the issue.

Residential servicers completed nearly 40,150 HAMP modifications in September, a 60% improvement from August, according to figures released by the U.S. Treasury Department.

The U.S. mortgage insurance business at Genworth Financial Inc., Richmond, Va., nearly halved its year-over-year loss in the third quarter as new flow delinquencies declined 14% from the previous year and new insurance written was up by 13% in the same timeframe.

American International Group, New York, reported a net loss of $4.1 million, which includes a $931 million decline in the fair market value of AIG's holdings in Maiden Lane III and a $43 million decline in the fair market value of its subsidiary SunAmerica's holdings in Maiden Lane II.

When we take full responsibility for our behavior—when we really own what we do and the impact of our —we immediately impose a range of extremely hardy pressures on ourselves to do the right thing. These pressures range from wanting to be proud of a job well done to wishing not to be humiliated or punished for doing the wrong thing.

U.S. District Court for the Central District of California Thursday dismissed a civil claim filed against Lender Processing Services by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which accused the mortgage vendor of gross negligence in appraisals conducted for the now defunct Washington Mutual, Seattle.

Selene Finance, a specialty servicer/loan modification company controlled by Lewis Ranieri, has hired Larry Litton Jr., and a handful of top managers from Litton Loan Servicing, Houston, according to servicing executives that have done business with the firm.

Redwood Trust, the only firm to publicly issue jumbo MBS the past two years, earned just $1 million in the third quarter, but its acquisition of nonconforming product in the secondary market jumped by 166%.

Mortgage companies pared their payrolls by just 300 full-time employees in September, compared to 3,400 cuts the prior month, according to new government figures released Friday morning.

A proposal from the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network would require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to develop their own anti-money laundering programs as part of an ongoing effort to combat mortgage fraud.

The outcry against the financial sector has taken yet another turn, this time with a petition calling on the Minneapolis School Board to move its payroll and other accounts from Wells Fargo to a local community bank as a way to highlight the connection between foreclosures and local school systems.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has the expertise to set servicing, underwriting, and mortgage securitization standards that could lead to the development of a private-label MBS market, according to the GSE regulator.