Technology

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.