The U.S. homeownership rate dropped to 65% in the first quarter, the lowest rate since 1995.

Since the economic downturn mortgage fraud has been a prevalent issue plaguing the housing industry for several years.

For the past decade, the social media scene for originators has been compared to the Wild Wild West.

House prices edged up 0.3% from January to February on a non-seasonally adjusted basis.

Worries over fraud, as well as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau holding lenders responsible for the actions of the third parties they use, is what is behind programs to vet title agents.

The National Association of Realtors’ leading indicator of future existing home sales increased in March, but contract activity in recent months is only improving modestly.

The banks object to a consolidation, saying each of the cases has separate claims, defendants, originators, disclosures, loans and evidence.

Rockville Financial said adding an online mortgage application was one of the reasons the bank holding company had a 74% increase in originations in the first quarter.

Mortgage Grapevine poster Jusross is unhappy with the online mortgage application software he is using.

Mortgage data is more valuable when delivered through the cloud because several people can use the data at the same time.

CoreLogic reported in its first-quarter results that it had acquired Case-Shiller from Fiserv on March 20 for $6 million cash.

A slowdown has started to take place for home values through the first quarter of 2013.

First-quarter cumulative defaults for fixed-rate commercial mortgage-backed securities were up 18 basis points from the end of 2012 at 13.6%.

As housing markets continue to stabilize across the country with rising home prices and inventories shrinking in these cities, this ultimately leads to the possibility for a higher potential of mortgage fraud.

Lender Processing Services had net income of $54 million in 1Q13, a 13% increase over the $47 million earned in the same quarter last year, even though revenue decreased 3% between the two periods. In 4Q12, when it settled some of the legal matters, LPS earned $2.8 million.

CoreLogic reported in its first-quarter results that it had acquired Case-Shiller from Fiserv back on March 20 for $6 million.

Wells Fargo released an update to its mobile applications to give borrowers the ability to manage their mortgage accounts from their mobile devices.

Mortgage insurer MGIC ended Wednesday with the largest percentage gain among stocks in this publication’s Mortgage Industry Equity Composite.

After insulting plumbers for a couple of weeks, I experienced a bit of karmic justice when I arrived home from my last round of travel.

It is a matter of preparing and motivating loan officers, both retail and wholesale.