Rocket Pro TPO, the wholesale arm of Rocket Mortgage, hopes to woo brokers with a slew of product enhancements and services. Rocket Pro TPO‘s executive vice president Mike Fawaz shared major changes and commitments for the broker community at its IGNITE Live event on Monday afternoon. Rocket Pro TPO affirmed that it will continue to […]
Among the numerous issues that retirement preparation can present to those near the end of their careers, long-term care (LTC) provides an increasingly common discussion point. One potential product that could assist in paying for LTC and its insurance could be a reverse mortgage, according to personal finance publication Kiplinger. LTC is already an expensive […]
360training.com, Inc. (360), an online regulated training provider, acquired Mortgage Educators and Compliance (MEC), a mortgage lending training company, both companies announced this week. Established in 1997, 360 specializes in comprehensive online training solutions for individuals and businesses across industries – including financial services, real estate, healthcare and environmental health and safety. The acquisition represents […]
Home-equity lending overall found its wings in 2023 as a number of independent mortgage banks ramped up product lines over the course of the year — despite a bump in the road in the third quarter when mortgage rates surged past 7%. The popularity of home equity lines of credit (HELOCs) and closed-end second (CES) […]
Is 2023 a year to forget? That’s what we’re supposed to say after a tough year, right? In the case of the mortgage industry, 2023 was not a pretty one. According to the Thomvest U.S. Housing Report, purchase loans were down 22% and refinance loan volume was down 65%. Home affordability was at its lowest […]
The presiding judge in the ongoing bankruptcy case of Reverse Mortgage Funding (RMF) has approved a stipulation that would resolve an administrative claim made against the company’s estate by reverse mortgage servicing company Celink, authorizing both companies to consummate the agreement. The new agreement The agreement, stemming from a proof of claim filed against RMF […]
ICE Mortgage Technology — part of Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) – will be offering lenders access to investment advisory advice in its Encompass loan origination system (LOS) through a partnership with Halcyon, a tech firm specializing in advanced data integration. “In the current market where the refi boom has dried up and interest rates are sky […]
The mortgage market should improve in 2024 due to a combination of competitive pressures easing and mortgage demand picking up from historical lows last year, according to a note from Piper Sandler, a leading investment bank. But don’t expect profitability to be significant compared to long-term historical averages as home prices still remain high. Mortgage […]
Top-15 U.S. mortgage lender loanDepot confirmed Monday morning that it is the industry’s latest cyberattack victim. The incident has brought loanDepot’s systems down. The California-based lender, which originated about $17 billion in mortgage loans from January to September 2023, said it launched an investigation with the support of cybersecurity experts and began notifying regulators after identifying an […]
Recently, new technologies have reduced costs associated with purchasing a home and provided more opportunities for first-time homebuyers to enter the market. To continue fostering innovation across the industry and better serve these homebuyers, regulators must take aim at one of the largest impediments to innovation: monopolies. The formation of a monopoly in the mortgage […]
Will the number of homes that take a price cut this year drop below 2023 levels? Yes! If the current trends continue into the strong seasonal pricing period, we will see fewer homes that are discounted before selling. I believe this was the most overlooked housing story of the last year because even as mortgage […]
Top-10 mortgage lender Guaranteed Rate has filed a lawsuit against retail rival New American Funding over poaching. But this isn’t your standard poaching lawsuit: G-Rate alleges that NAF has wooed at least 30 employees since early 2023 via illegal loan officer compensation practices. Despite the rise in poaching lawsuits in a competitive market, it’s the […]
The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) faces a potential loss of roughly $7 billion in receipts in 2024, and a failure by Congress to come to terms on certain spending agreements could force across-the-board cuts to non-defense spending of roughly 5-to-9%. This is according to a letter published this week by the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), […]
California-based Pennymac Financial Services has hired Kristy Dickey, a former executive at Citizens Bank, as first vice president of TPO sales. Dickey will be responsible for growing the lender’s broker division and support its brokers and non-delegated partners, the firm said. A total of five additional senior account executives joined Dickey. The new hires joined […]
Rocket Pro TPO – the wholesale arm of Rocket Mortgage – made updates to its existing products to court more brokers. Its ONE+ program – a conventional 1% down home loan program that launched in May – will include Freddie Mac‘s loan product advisor (LPA), which could translate to a 16% increase in client eligibility, […]
When assessing December’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) volume data for December 2023, Reverse Market Insight (RMI) used a choice word as the title for its commentary: “thud.” Amid an already challenging operating environment observed throughout 2023, both HECM endorsement volume and HECM-backed Securities (HMBS) issuance closed out the year on a low note, with […]
Detroit-based Rocket Companies, parent of Rocket Mortgage, has named Jonathan Mildenhall to its newly created chief marketing officer position, responsible for the marketing and communications teams for all the company’s brands. Mildenhall will create and unify a “compelling voice for all businesses under the Rocket Companies umbrella,” the company said in a statement. He will start on […]
In the first week of 2024, mortgage rates continued to stick around the mid 6% mark. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.62% as of Jan. 4, a slight increase from the 6.61% rate recorded on Dec. 28, according to Freddie Mac‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on Thursday. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.89% this […]
Mortgage tech firm Blend aims to court more lenders as it now supports Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter (DU) early assessment enhancement with a direct integration from Blend’s soft credit pull function. DU early assessment gives lenders more options for their pre-qualification process in DU. Lenders can submit a single soft pull credit file and receive […]
William Erbey, the controversial founder of Ocwen Financial Corp., is back as chairman at Altisource Asset Management Corp. (AAMC). The company appointed Erbey to the role of CEO in late December and the board of directors also appointed him as its Chairman, a position he held from March 2012 to January 2015. This comes on […]
Nonbank mortgage lender and servicer Pennymac Financial Services issued pink slips to more than 80 employees in November as it faced tough headwinds in 2023. A total of 84 staff were affected at five offices in Pasadena, Roseville, Agoura Hills, Westlake Village and Moorpark, California, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notifications (WARN) alert […]
Deran Pennington, a former Movement Mortgage top sales executive sued for poaching by the lender, filed a counterclaim alleging that Movement breached the contract by failing and refusing to pay his due compensation. In total, he asks for about $13 million. In July, HousingWire reported that Pennington and two other top sales executives – Matt Schoolfield and […]
Reverse mortgage servicing company Celink is seeking the dismissal of a lawsuit alleging that it had added unlawful servicing fees to reverse mortgage loans alongside now-bankrupt lender Reverse Mortgage Funding (RMF). In response to the recent recommendation by a magistrate judge against the dismissal of Dancy-Wilkins v. Compu-Link Corporation, the servicer said that the recommendation […]
Mortgage demand fell over the holidays despite declining mortgage rates. Mortgage applications decreased 9.4% for the week ending Dec. 29 compared to two weeks earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). The 30-year fixed mortgage rate closed 2023 at 6.76%, more than one percentage point lower than its October peak of 7.9%, […]
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New York-based nonbank mortgage lender RealFi (formally known as Residential Home Funding Corp.) laid off employees in December and did not issue their last paychecks or provide a severance package, former workers told HousingWire. The company’s executives held a conference call with employees on Dec. 15, notifying them about the job cuts because of a […]
2023 is in the rearview mirror — a year of tumult, reduced volume and a wave of industry exits and consolidations. While most have their eyes on the horizon, HousingWire’s dedicated reverse-centric publication, Reverse Mortgage Daily (RMD), will look back one more time at a year of challenge. Here, RMD takes stock of three of […]
The “silver tsunami” — a colloquialism referring to aging Americans changing their housing arrangements to accommodate aging — could have more of an impact on the housing market this year, according to analyst Meredith Whitney in a conversation with Yahoo Finance. “[T]he other major demographic trend you see is the aging of America,” Whitney said. […]
When will the mortgage industry know it has reached the tipping point where innovation is no longer a competitive advantage but an existential need? Maybe when it consistently fails to attract viable, aspirational customers (in part because it is cycling through last year’s leads and legacy customers instead of innovating new pathways to reach underserved, […]
Some people still think of social media platforms as places where your grandma’s dance moves go viral and your dog has more followers than you. While that may be accurate, as digital platforms continue to evolve at an exceptional rate, it has become nearly impossible for businesses to thrive without a social presence. In 2023, […]
The 2023 housing market faced one of the same roadblocks we saw in 2022: mortgage rates were too high for home sales growth. Now that we’re in 2024, the Federal Reserve‘s rate hike cycle is over, so let’s look at what that means for housing demand and home prices. However, a yearly forecast has limitations […]
Rocket Companies expanded its board of directors from seven to eight, giving its chief executive officer Varun Krishna a newly-created seat. Krishna was voted to serve as a Class III director, effective December 21, 2023, according to an 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on Thursday. Krishna will serve “for a term […]
After nearly two years of trudging through a frozen housing market, the consensus among mortgage professionals is that the worst of it is over. The Federal Reserve recently signaled plans to slash interest rates three times in 2024, shifting toward the next phase in its monetary policymaking. “It finally seems like we are turning a […]
As we prepare to bid adieu to 2023, mortgage rates this week again stayed below seven percent. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.61% as of Dec. 28, a slight decrease from the 6.67% rate recorded on Dec. 21 according to Freddie Mac‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey released on Thursday. The 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 5.93% […]
In his 20 years in mortgage banking, no year has compared to 2023 in terms of difficulty, said Ben Cohen, Guaranteed Rate’s managing director and a top-producing loan officer. “This is a lot different than 2008 where you needed a credit score and a heartbeat to get a mortgage. Now, you need to be very […]
Guild Mortgage has an ambitious plan under the leadership of its new CEO, Terry Schmidt. The California-based retail lender has set a target of becoming a top-10 lender in the markets in which it has a presence, which would give it about 2% in overall market share. It won’t be easy. United Wholesale Mortgage, the […]
Mortgage subservicer Loancare informed authorities that the data of about 1.3 million customers was compromised following a cyberattack in November on its parent company, the big four title firm Fidelity National Financial (FNF). This data includes customers’ social security numbers. The company informed officials in Maine and California that 1,316,938 customers had information accessed by hackers during the incident. […]
Kyle Joseph, a specialty finance equity research analyst at Jefferies, believes that the worst of the current mortgage cycle may be behind us, a sentiment shared by most analysts covering this industry. “Barring any sort of unforeseen consequences, I’d like to think so,” Joseph said in an interview. “Obviously, this cycle was fast and furious […]
As we approach Christmas day, we can only hope that the Federal Reserve now realizes their fear of 1970s-style inflation created a rate-hike cycle that disproportionately impacted the U.S. housing market and that they need to be pro-housing again. Even with all the drama we have dealt with in 2022-2023, the housing market stayed intact […]
Entering the real estate finance world in the summer of 2022 as a 23-year-old, I immediately felt like a fish out of water. Attending industry-related conferences and visiting clients, I was typically the only person in the room under the age of 30. Our industry is full of professionals with decades of experience, but with […]
The year ahead promises to offer the housing industry some relief, compared with a grueling 2023, but it is likely to be only a small bounce forward toward a healthier market. The housing industry, including the secondary market it feeds, is still likely to be sluggish in 2024, with marginal improvements in some sectors as […]
While delinquencies remain low overall, the number of delinquent loans ticked up in November, according to the latest ICE Mortgage Monitor report. Furthermore, the delinquency rate among FHA loans is at a nine-year high, and will be worth watching closely in 2024, the report said. The national delinquency rate climbed to 3.39% in November, which […]
Dovenmuehle Mortgage, a mortgage sub-servicing company, has informed authorities in Illinois that it will impose a layoff affecting hundreds of employees next year. The company has decided to cut 212 jobs in its Lake Zurich site starting on Feb. 16, 2024, per a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) filed with the Illinois Department of […]
Mortgage rates stayed below 7% for the second week in a row, a welcome relief after a 17-week streak of above-7% rates. This week’s dip is the largest weekly drop since November 2022. The 30-year, fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.67% for the week ending Dec. 21, according to Freddie Mac‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey. That’s […]
It was late 2022 and Mike was feeling the pressure. Mortgage rates had climbed close to the 7% range and he was determined to remain competitive on pricing with rival loan officers in North Carolina. But there was a problem: pricing exceptions, in which the lender takes the hit, were becoming scarce at his company. […]