Nationally, there were 58,000 completed foreclosures during October, down from 77,000 the prior month and 70,000 a year ago.

The acquisition will add more than 1,500 mortgage risk specialists to service provider MphasiS and help the company provide more intense mortgage risk analysis.

If residential lenders didn’t have enough to worry about they now have the “fiscal cliff” and the mortgage interest deduction to lose sleep over.

Fannie Mae reported forward commitments—a barometer of future activity—of $96.7 billion, the highest reading in over three years.

The biggest gainer among the top five was Quicken, a privately held nonbank controlled by businessman Dan Gilbert.

Lots of financial institutions use social media as a marketing and customer service tool, but few have figured out how to actually make money from it.

Fifth Third Bank is combining mobile technology and a browser-based loan officer portal to build its mortgage business and better communicate with borrowers.

William Neville is working on expanding the usage of Mortgagebot and Avista origination technologies organically in the near term.

The average weekly rates for 30- and 15-year fixed-rate mortgages each inched up by one basis point from their record lows.

About 700,000 homeowners refinanced their mortgages through the government’s Home Affordable Refinancing Program in the first nine months of this year.

The nation’s top five servicers had a combined servicing market share of 55.6% at Sept. 30, a stunning loss of eight points in share over the past 12 months.

New-home sales fell to a 368,000 seasonally adjusted annualized rate in October, down 0.3% from September.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago that launched the Mortgage Partnership Finance initiative 15 years ago has been recruiting other FHLBs to sign up for the secondary market program.

Freddie Mac purchased $50 billion of home mortgages from its seller/servicers in October, the highest reading since June of 2009, according to new figures released by the government-controlled secondary market giant.

Low-income consumers are more likely to have a mortgage broker or real estate agent influence their loan decision.

Zillow has reached an agreement to acquire HotPads, a map-based rental housing and real estate search engine, for $16 million.

Lenders interviewed by National Mortgage News this past week said volumes remain strong.

Mortgagors in the District of Columbia have the highest monthly mortgage payment in the nation, shelling out nearly $1,642 every 30 days.

Ellie Mae said that Susan Chenoweth Scarth has joined the company as senior vice president of marketing.

The taxman is allowing electronic signatures to be used for income verification documents, removing a lingering obstacle to paperless origination.