Category: News and Trends

As the House and Senate Budget Committees take up fiscal 2017 spending bills, the Mortgages Bankers Association and more than a dozen industry trade groups reiterated their opposition to use of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac guarantee fees to offset unrelated appropriations.

MBA NewsLink recently posed questions to Pramod Karachur, project manager with IndiSoft LLC, Columbia, Md.

Equifax, Atlanta, reported the total balance of outstanding first mortgages rose to more than $8.3 trillion in January, a 2.1 percent increase from a year ago.

The Mortgage Bankers Association and a half-dozen industry trade groups sent a letter to leadership of the House Financial Services and House Armed Services Committees, urging them to support legislation that restores and extends a one-year extension of foreclosure protections for members of the armed services.

HOPE NOW reported its member companies offered nearly 1.5 million foreclosure alternatives in 2015, including 420,000 completed permanent loan modifications.

Thanks to the extended refinance boom, everyone who could have refinanced their mortgages have already done so, right? Think again, says Black Knight Financial Services, Jacksonville, Fla.

Clear Capital, Reno, Nev., said home price appreciation continued fall quarter over quarter, but pointed to lower distressed saturation levels as a harbinger of a stronger spring home market.

Pro Teck Valuation Services, Waltham, Mass., said despite falling home delinquency and foreclosure rates, the stark difference between states that use a judicial foreclosure process and those that minimize court actions continues to show up in recovery rates in those state’s cities.

CoreLogic, Irvine, Calif., said distressed sales accounted for just 10 percent of homes sold in the U.S. in December, with real estate owned sales at just 3.4 percent.

RealtyTrac, Irvine, Calif., said nearly 180,000 U.S. single-family homes and condos flipped in 2015, up for the first time in four years and at the highest level since 2007.