Technology

Rapid Reporting, Fort Worth, Texas, has added a Taxpayer Summary Report to its flagship IncomeChek income verification product that is designed to reduce underwriting time by auto-populating critical information for income verification.The creation of the product came in response to recent changes in the Internal Revenue Service's method of reporting borrower income data. Effective October 2006, the IRS started providing tax transcripts in a much more detailed format, making the task of locating specific income more laborious. For example, transcripts for a three-year period were previously eight pages long at the most, but now the same data are presented in roughly 20 pages. With the Taxpayer Summary Report, all the critical income data included in those transcripts is sorted and presented in a shorter, easy-to-access format, according to Rapid Reporting. In addition, because the report is customizable and in XML format, users can select critical data most applicable to their business processes and get all of it in one streamlined, easy-to-read page. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.rapidreporting.com.

MortgageFlex Systems Inc. has announced its certification by Freddie Mac as one of only six companies to offer a loan origination system interface that meets the specifications of Loan Prospector, version 4.1.Loan Prospector is Freddie Mac's Web-based automated underwriting system. MortgageFlex said its LoanQuest Residential Lending System automates all functions inherent in the loan origination process from pre-qualification to commitment to secondary marketing. The Processing and Underwriting modules include embedded interfaces to Freddie Mac's Loan Prospector and Fannie Mae's Desktop Underwriter, the company said. MortgageFlex can be found on the Web at http://www.mortgageflex.com.

Atlanta-based Street Resource Group Inc. has announced the launch of the Warehouse Information Network, which offers a loan registry alert tool to prevent fraudulent drawing of funds from multiple warehouse lines simultaneously.WIN is an independent, membership-based collaborative providing "automated risk mitigation services, shared industry information databases, and forums for the exchange of ideas on issues related to mortgage warehouse lending," the company said. According to the announcement, WIN will function as a consortium to develop mortgage warehouse lending standards and practices as well as a vehicle to communicate as a collective group with other industries (title companies, electronic mortgage suppliers, etc.) that affect the business of warehouse lending. At launch, SRG will supply the management, technology, and leadership for the Warehouse Information Network. WIN offers a loan registry alert service to detect inter-warehouse fraud.

Lenders First Choice, Simi Valley, Calif., and Calyx Software, San Jose, Calif., have announced the integration of LFC's title insurance and settlement services application into Calyx Point, which connects loan officers and processors to lenders and service providers.LFC is using the Calyx WebConnect technology, which the companies said ensures compatibility with Point and Point Data Server. "WebConnect allows brokers to launch the LFC transactional website directly from inside Point, enabling users to send and receive loan data without leaving the application," the companies said. "When the LFC application returns data to Point, the loan file to which it pertains is automatically updated, and any supporting documentation is stored with the loan file." The companies can be found online at http://www.lendersfirstchoice.com and http://www.calyxsoftware.com.

Boasting offshoring credentials for the mortgage industry going back to 2000, Global Realty Outsourcing, Blackheath Financial, and Zenta (formerly H-Cube) have announced that they are uniting under the Zenta brand to offer business process outsourcing and knowledge process outsourcing (KPO) services to the real estate and financial services industries.According to the announcement, the combined company has 5,000 employees in six locations across three continents, with many employees holding MBA degrees and chartered accountant certifications. In an earlier announcement, American Capital Strategies Ltd. said it invested $17 million in H-Cube LLC to support the acquisition of Blackheath Financial, which provides outsourced real estate analysis and consulting services to commercial mortgage-backed securities underwriters and investors. Zenta can be found on the Web at http://www.zenta.com.

After joining the Mortgage Bankers Association and starting the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization over seven years ago, Gabe Minton is stepping down to assume the role of chief strategy officer at Mortgage Cadence, a Denver-based enterprise lending solution company.A source close to the situation confirmed that Harry Gardner will assume Mr. Minton's responsibilities at the MBA and that Dan Szparaga, who runs the commercial portion of MISMO, will now oversee the residential portion as well. Both appointments are interim, but are expected to become permanent. Mr. Minton told MortgageWire that he will miss the MBA and running MISMO, but looks forward to moving on to Mortgage Cadence and continuing to participate in MISMO as a member. "I honestly couldn't think of a better fit for me than Mortgage Cadence," he said. The company can be found on the Web at http://www.mortgagecadence.com.

Home values declined slightly on a year-over-year basis for the second consecutive quarter in the first quarter of 2007, though the Pacific Northwest is bucking the trend, according to Zillow.com, an online real estate community based in Seattle.Zillow's quarterly national home value report, which is also released in 46 metropolitan areas, found that home values fell 1.01% in the first quarter and were 0.83% lower than in the first quarter of 2006. "While numerous cities around the nation are showing actual year-over-year declines in home values, the Pacific Northwest is largely bucking that trend and, in fact, is showing double-digit appreciation in some areas," said Stan Humphries, Zillow's vice president of data and analytics. "Four of the top five highest-appreciating metropolitan areas are located in Washington state or Oregon. Conversely, the two areas with the most depreciation are on the Gulf Coast of Florida, both with double-digit depreciation." Zillow can be found online at http://www.zillow.com.

Cincinnati-based eLynx has formed a strategic partnership with MortgageDocs, a nationwide mobile notary and attorney service provider, to further facilitate the use of hybrid electronic mortgage practices.Through eLynx's automated package delivery application, lenders can electronically submit documents to MortgageDocs, which then manages the signing and notarization process. On average, a notary is assigned to an individual borrower within 30 minutes of receipt, and sometimes as quickly as one minute in highly populated locations, the companies said. The network also provides real-time performance history statistics. The companies can be found on the Web at http://www.elynx.com and http://www.mortgagedocs.com.

Rapid Reporting, Fort Worth, Texas, has announced a partnership with Calyx Software, a broker loan origination vendor based in San Jose, Calif., to help brokers detect fraud earlier in the process.Rapid Reporting said it will offer mortgage fraud detection capabilities to users of Calyx's core group of products and services, including the company's flagship loan origination application, Calyx Point. As part of the agreement, Calyx Software users will be able to interface to Rapid Reporting's Web-based IncomeChek and DirectChek tools. Through established relationships with both the Internal Revenue Service and the Social Security Administration, Rapid Reporting enables users to detect and reveal potential mortgage fraud associated with deceptive income and identity information, the company said. Rapid Reporting can be found on the Web at http://www.rapidreporting.com.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Wachovia is one of the lenders drawing high marks for its just-launched campaign to offer customers the option of closing a mortgage loan refinancing online without ever leaving their home or office.Bank customers who go to the company's website and click on "mortgage" are presented with a banner advertisement inviting them to close a loan "from any location with an Internet connection." The online service is powered by ClosingStream, a product of Fidelity National Information Services' LSI. Early indications show a third of Wachovia's refinancing and home equity borrowers choosing the e-closing option over the traditional closing process. To date, Fidelity claims 20,000 e-closings via ClosingStream, which its LSI unit touts as the first viable Web-based closing solution to be offered nationwide. Wachovia can be found online at http://www.wachovia.com.