When it comes to reducing cybersecurity risks, your team plays a crucial role. To ensure the safety of your digital assets and sensitive information, it’s important to make sure all users are well-informed about cybersecurity and receive periodic training. To reduce risks, we’ll explore why empowering your team through education and training is essential to […]
Investigators at the U.S. Department of Labor announced on Wednesday that they found that PrimeLending, a Texas-based retail mortgage bank, violated whistleblower provisions in a case involving two employees who raised consumer fraud concerns. According to the DOL, the company terminated two California-based employees after they reported to a regional manager and the vice president of Human Resources that […]
Modern manufactured homes are an unusual feature of today’s housing market, the rare homeownership opportunity that is both lower-cost and high-quality. Thanks to the efficiencies baked into the construction processes of manufactured homes, these factory-built houses are both faster and less expensive to build than site-built homes, saving buyers between $50,000 to $100,000 per unit. […]
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) are asking federal housing officials to confirm their treatment of interested party contributions (IPCs) to home purchase transactions. In a letter addressed to Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) director Sandra Thompson, Fannie Mae CEO Priscilla Almodovar, Freddie Mac CEO Michael DeVito, and Federal […]
Better Home & Finance Holding Co., the parent of digital lender Better.com, narrowed its net loss between the third and fourth quarters of 2023 by more than 80%, driven by expense cuts to its platform and marketing efforts. Going forward, Better is focused on driving market share and reaching profitability in the medium term. The […]
New York-based multichannel lender US Mortgage Corporation is expanding its efforts in the reverse mortgage space, illustrating its focus on growth. The company recently hired reverse mortgage industry veteran Ken Krajewski to serve as its managing director and head of reverse mortgage lending. The expansion of US Mortgage’s dedicated reverse lending division, which has been […]
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) urged the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to revise its policies that ban veterans from paying broker commissions, an issue that is gaining attention following the NAR’s landmark $418 million settlement. Earlier this month, the NAR announced the settlement of various lawsuits filed by home sellers, which allege […]
Reverse mortgage software and calculator provider Ibis Software announced this week that it appointed Robert Sivori, a reverse mortgage industry veteran, to its board of directors. Sivori’s role became effective March 1, according to an announcement distributed to RMD by company president Jerry Wagner. “Bringing a wealth of experience from the reverse mortgage industry, Sivori […]
Clear Capital, a real estate valuation technology company, has broadened its collaboration with data management platform Cherre, the companies announced on Wednesday. Under the expanded partnership, Cherre’s customers will gain access to ClearAVM, Clear Capital’s automated valuation model (AVM), through Cherre’s advanced programming interface (API). ClearAVM offers precise property valuations, empowering property investors and asset […]
Figure Technology Solutions (FTS), the parent company of Figure Lending LLC, took another step this week to become a public company, just one week after announcing a reorganization of its enterprise structure. On Wednesday, the company said it “has confidentially submitted a draft registration statement” with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the proposed initial public […]
Mortgage demand remained subdued for the second consecutive week despite slightly lower mortgage rates. Mortgage applications decreased by 0.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis during the week ending March 22, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey. “Purchase applications were essentially unchanged, as homebuyers continue to hold out for lower mortgage […]
The Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program faces stability and viability challenges stemming from the 2022 collapse of a major industry lender and its extinguishment from the HECM-backed Securities (HMBS) program, which could warrant congressional scrutiny if these challenges are not properly addressed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Ginnie […]
Last year might best be described as a risk-prone atmosphere for the single-family rental sector and the related fix-and-flip market. The risky operating environment has been marked by volatile, high interest rates (with 30-year fixed rates now hovering around 7%), high financing costs and moderating rental rates as an influx of multifamily rental properties continues […]
Mortgage rates rose this week as the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note inched up. As of Monday, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note was about 4.25%, according to Tradeweb, up from 3.86% at the end of last year. As a result, HousingWire’s Mortgage Rates Center showed the average 30-year fixed rate […]
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac completed 43,903 foreclosure prevention actions in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to a new report published by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Over the course of 2023, the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) completed 192,897 foreclosure prevention actions. This brought the total to 6.905 million since the start of the […]
California-based multichannel mortgage lender HighTechLending appointed reverse mortgage industry veteran Brian Boccia to serve as a senior account executive in its third-party origination (TPO) channel. He joins the company after prior experience at companies like Mutual of Omaha Mortgage and Reverse Mortgage Funding (RMF). Aiming to keep in mind the financial difficulties that seniors may […]
Fueled by a surge in mortgage rates, owning a home has become increasingly expensive. According to a Freddie Mac housing and mortgage market report released Monday, while mortgage payments remain the primary pressure point for homeowners, insurance costs are emerging as a growing burden. Homeowners insurance costs, though still much smaller than mortgage principal and […]
Last week was a pretty strong week for all the housing numbers. New supply and sales numbers keep climbing — both weekly and over last year. Home prices had a slight increase this week across the board. What does this means for home prices this spring? As the data comes in each week this year, […]
The current global market cap for “equity release” products, including reverse mortgages, could hit $50 billion by 2033, more than doubling its current size. This is according to a report compiled by the European Pensions and Property Asset Release Group (EPPARG), a trade association that represents European equity release companies. “The report gathers data from […]
Mortgage rates had a chance to break to new highs this year, but the Federal Reserve took a moderate tone at the last Fed meeting. We saw the benefit of lower mortgage rates with the last two existing home sales reports, which showed growth. Then mortgage rates rose, facilitating five weeks of negative purchase application […]
Property preservation company MCS is entering the reverse mortgage space after its acquisition of Five Brothers Asset Management Solutions, a deal which brings MCS into the reverse mortgage industry for the first time. After performing its due diligence to determine the market status and business opportunity that would come with entering the space, MCS CEO […]
Home equity levels among homeowners aged 62 and older are at record levels following the end of the pandemic. As a result, reverse mortgages may no longer be considered a “loan of last resort” as financial planners aim to highlight their uses as part of a comprehensive financial plan in retirement. This is according to […]
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) and the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) are urging lawmakers to swiftly pass a spending bill being deliberated in Congress on Friday to avoid risking the expiration of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), which the organizations say could have deeply felt consequences for their members and U.S. homeowners. “On […]
Equifax’s Work Number product is too expensive for consumers and the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) should potentially do something about it, an influential mortgage trade group argued this week. In a letter submitted to FHA commissioner Julia Gordon and FHFA director Sandra Thompson on Thursday, the Community Home Lenders […]
U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Justice‘s Antitrust Division, urging an investigation of Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO), the company that retains the rights to the mortgage market’s adopted methodology to measure consumer credit risk. The letter, dated March 12 and addressed to assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter, […]
Rocket Mortgage president Tim Birkmeier is retiring after a nearly 28-year stint at the Michigan-headquartered lender. “It is with great pride that I publicly announce my retirement from Rocket Companies and the mortgage industry,” Birkmeier wrote in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. “It was absolutely inspiring to take part in an amazing growth story of […]
Mike Fratantoni, the chief economist and senior vice president of research and industry technology at the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), addressed three major challenges in the housing market during testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives‘ Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance. The biggest challenge in today’s housing market is the lack of inventory, […]
One of the major takeaways from Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s Wednesday news conference was that officials still expect interest rates to come down three times this year, indicating that recent higher-than-expected inflation numbers haven’t been enough to derail previous forecasts. As widely anticipated, central bankers left the benchmark interest rate steady at 5.25% to […]
Reverse mortgage industry veteran Tane Cabe recently left his position at Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp.’s reverse division to transition back into a role as a reverse mortgage broker. He joined C2 Financial’s reverse division in a move that he says helped to return him to his “roots.” RMD caught up with Cabe recently to learn […]
The PROGRESS in Lending Association released the names for its 2024 Innovations Award winners last week, including two vendors that are active in the reverse mortgage industry, according to an announcement. The organization recognized LoanPASS for its loan pricing software, which can map out forward and reverse mortgage options side by side. “In this current […]
About 65 mortgage professionals have not transitioned from AmCap Home Loans to its acquirer, CrossCountry Mortgage (CCM), and rival New American Funding (NAF) has hired the AmCap personnel to expand its business in Texas, the lender announced last week. Industry veteran Tom Boyd became a divisional executive vice president at NAF in December after spending more than 10 years at AmCap, […]
The Federal Reserve’s Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC) held its short-term policy interest rate steady at a range of 5.25% to 5.5% for a fifth straight meeting on Wednesday. “The Committee does not expect it will be appropriate to reduce the target range until it has gained greater confidence that inflation is moving sustainably toward […]
Figure Lending LLC is now operating under the umbrella of Figure Technology Solutions, independent of CEO Mike Cagney’s Figure Technologies. Figure Technology Solutions will focus on developing and distributing its proprietary, technology-enabled platform to partners and investors in the home equity lending ecosystem, the fintech firm announced earlier this week. The launch of Figure Technology […]
Mortgage demand receded after the release of a stronger-than-expected inflation reading last week. Mortgage applications decreased by 1.6% on a seasonally adjusted basis during the week ending March 15, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) weekly mortgage applications survey. It was the first decrease in demand in three weeks. “Mortgage rates increased last week […]
Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) launched a mortgage insurance (MI) center on its Encompass loan origination system, part of the company’s vision to to become a ‘life-of-loan’ platform. The mortgage insurance center, which provides services from third-party providers Arch MI, Enact, Essent, MGIC, National MI and Radian, will improve management functionality and enhance rate quote comparisons, ICE […]
In Tuesday’s report, the 5-unit housing permits data hit the same levels we saw in the COVID-19 recession. Once the backlog of apartments is finished, those jobs will be at risk, which traditionally means mortgage rates would fall soon after, as they have in previous economic cycles. However, this is happening while single-family permits are […]
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Office of Housing Counseling (OHC) has made a series of updates to its Housing Counseling Program Handbook, including extensive additions, consolidations and reorganizations to a section focused on the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) program. This is according to a January meeting of the Housing Counseling […]
New York-based Rithm Capital has changed the compensation package of its top executive, Michael Nierenberg, by reducing his annual base salary, bonus and time-based equity award. But the company also increased the performance-based share of the total equity award. As a result, Nierenberg’s target annual compensation rose from $15 million to $17 million, according to […]
Mortgage capital markets tech firm Polly announced its application programming interface (API) integration with CoreLogic, which will enable lenders to streamline the digital mortgage process. Polly’s product and pricing engine (PPE) was built with an API-adjacent product strategy, which can create opportunities for optimal system-to-system integration that helps improve lender efficiencies, Polly said in a […]
Strong employment numbers and hotter-than-expected inflation data won’t provide the Federal Reserve greater confidence to ease its monetary policy in the near term, Fannie Mae’s Economic and Strategic Research (ESR) group said this week. As a result, 30-year mortgage rates will remain higher for longer than expected. In contrast to its previous forecast that mortgage […]
Lewisville, Texas-based property services company MCS announced last week that it acquired Five Brothers Asset Management Solutions, a deal which brings MCS into the reverse mortgage industry for the first time, according to an announcement by the company. MCS contends that the deal creates “a national property preservation and services market leader that combines complementary […]
Mortgage rates remained flat this week ahead of the next meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). HousingWire’s Mortgage Rates Center showed the average 30-year fixed rate for conventional loans at 7.07% on Tuesday, down from 7.08% one week earlier. At the same time one year ago, the 30-year fixed rate averaged 6.69%. Meanwhile, […]
President Joe Biden will be in Las Vegas on Tuesday, where he will offer additional remarks about the policies and priorities of his administration’s push to address housing issues for renters and buyers alike. Biden will also highlight the money offered to states in the 2021 American Rescue Plan Act to boost affordable housing supply. […]
As we started 2024, the signals in the U.S. real estate market were for inventory growth, sales growth and home-price growth across the U.S. At the time, I observed that even if mortgage rates stayed flat, the momentum seemed to be in the cards for broad, slow growth in the market. However, mortgage rates didn’t […]
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced on Monday that it has raised lending limits for its Title I Manufactured Home Loan Program, a move designed to align the FHA with market forces and to encourage more lenders to participate in the program as the Biden administration makes a renewed push on affordable housing. The move […]