The news that the Federal Housing Administration is going to rev up its pilot distressed asset sale program is just another indication that this market is ready to boom.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

The days of mortgage companies embarking on large, expensive and open-ended information technology projects are long gone and executives are focusing their efforts on smaller-scale projects that produce faster results, according to a panel at the Mortgage Bankers Association Commercial/Multifamily Servicing and Technology Conference this week in Dallas.

It is no surprise that the law of supply and demand drives costs upward or downward depending on the trajectory of the major component. The same principle holds true in the rental market.

The National Association of Realtors reported that sales of existing homes rose 3.4% in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.62 million units.

Changing market dynamics are putting more stress and constraints on commercial real estate servicing, causing processors to reevaluate their business models and strategies, according to a panel at the Mortgage Bankers Association commercial mortgage servicing and technology show this week in Dallas.

According to Lender Processing Services’ ‘First Look’ report from its database of nearly 40 million mortgage loans, the month-over-month delinquency rate rose 0.4% in April, bringing the overall delinquency rate of loans 30 or more days past due (but not in foreclosure) to 7.12%.

Documenting and verifying a borrower’s income is one of the most basic tasks for an underwriter. While this appears to be relatively simple, validating income has become increasingly complex and susceptible to borrower fraud.

You remember the HARP program, don’t you? Originally, the idea was to refinance current but high LTV Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac borrowers into new, lower-rate loans—provided they were current. Home values (and lack of equity) reeked havoc on the concept so Uncle Sam took the LTV girdle off.

Abhinav Asthana of Wipro Gallagher Solutions discusses issues and trends around mobile technology.

One of the nation’s largest real estate brokerage firms said home sales were essentially flat in April after a 25% spike in March.