Mortgage industry watchers have started 2023 with optimism regarding the possibility of mortgage rates returning to the 5% range this year – but not without a dose of volatility on the way. “The mortgage market began 2023 on a positive note, with a decline in mortgage rates leading to an uptick in refinance applications. Purchase […]
Black Knight recently launched a web portal that enables clients, third-party providers and their developers to access the company’s application programming interfaces (APIs) across the mortgage life cycle. Dubbed the Developer Portal, clients can use Black Knight’s APIs to rapidly embed additional functionality within their applications, the company said in an announcement about the rollout. […]
Chantilly, Virginia-headquartered mortgage bank Prosperity Home Mortgage, a subsidiary of HomeServices of America, promoted Justin Messer to president and CEO on January 1, 2023. Messer succeeds Tim Wilson, who has been in the position since 2014. Messer, who was the Prosperity COO for more than three years, will be responsible for leading the lender to […]
Michigan-based United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) is taking another step to aggressively reduce its prices in order to gain market share in a shrinking mortgage market. The company announced on Wednesday that it is giving up to 125 basis points to brokers to use on any loans they lock with the lender, with a maximum of 40 basis […]
Nashville, Tennessee-headquartered Defy Mortgage is the latest player to join the non-QM (non-qualified mortgage) lending space, which targets entrepreneurs and gig workers who have various forms of collateral, including cryptocurrency. The company takes a “holistic approach” to evaluating a homebuyer’s entire asset portfolio, including cryptocurrency and bitcoin, Defy Mortgage said Tuesday in an announcement about […]
Loan officers saw an increase in mortgage demand during the first week of 2023 as mortgage rates ticked down. And to close deals, sellers are increasingly coming to the table with concessions and rate buydowns. “I’ve had five people contact me in the last week or so to talk about buying a new home, which […]
American Pacific Mortgage (APM) has scooped up roughly 150 employees from 20 AmeriFirst Financial Inc. branches since December 2022, APM confirmed. APM learned the Arizona-based lender’s branches were ceasing originations last month, which led to an opportunity to recruit branch managers, loan originators and processors to make up for the lost production this year, APM’s […]
Well, here we are at the beginning of another year. For those of us in housing finance, the calendar year change really does mean something. There is a mix of hope and uncertainty as we anticipate the potential increase of post-holiday volume and the proven run up to the spring and summer buying season. However, […]
Wells Fargo, the largest depository mortgage lender in America, announced Tuesday that it is officially exiting the correspondent channel as well as reducing its servicing portfolio, the country’s largest. The market already expected the move. Bloomberg reported in August that Wells Fargo would likely shrink or eliminate the correspondent channel, with bank executives expressing concern about […]
A new Redfin report found a record 41.9% of home sellers gave concessions to homebuyers in Q4 of 2022, through money for repairs and mortgage-rate buydowns. This represents the highest increase of any three-month period since July 2020 when Redfin started tracking this data. In Q3 of 2022 and Q4 of 2021, sellers gave concessions […]
Potential homebuyers’ purchase sentiment improved slightly in December, but that still remains well below pre-pandemic highs, according to new data from Fannie Mae. Ongoing affordability challenges are expected to limit buyers from entering the market in 2023, according to Fannie Mae, which will result in continued decline in home sales in coming months. But despite […]
Kansas City, Missouri-based North American Savings Bank (NASB) will shut down its consumer direct mortgage division and lay off employees, business partners and former employees told HousingWire. The changes will be effective on March 7. The mortgage lender announced the decision to employees on Friday, citing market conditions. Shortly after, employees, including closers, processors and […]
Rocket Pro TPO, a wholesale arm of Rocket Mortgage, will be providing credit reports at no cost for brokers when closing loans through the Detroit lender. The strategy is expected to court more brokers in an industry facing higher credit report fees. Rocket Pro TPO’s executive vice president Mike Fawaz said in an interview with […]
The housing market saw inventory fall 4% last week from the week before. That’s a big one-week change. Does that mean we are heading back to all-time lows in inventory again for 2023? Traditionally, we do see housing inventory fall in the month of December, however, we clearly saw in the second half of 2022 […]
One slice of the single-family home market that has gained traction over the past year in a topsy-turvy housing landscape is the build-for-rent sector — or BFR. Construction starts in the BFR market are being propelled by the ongoing demand for single-family rental units as high mortgage rates and limited for-sale inventory push home-purchase prospects […]
The Federal Reserve‘s signals indicating further rate hikes for 2023 appear to have scared buyers away from the market in December. Last month tallied the fewest purchase lock counts in a single month since early 2014 as interest rates and affordability pressures challenged the market. Mortgage origination activity dropped 19.4% from November to December, marking […]
Can we have a soft landing in the economy? Friday’s job report shows there is a clear pathway to get there. Mortgage rates fell aggressively down to 6.20%, putting us at more than 1% below the highs of 2022. The bond market saw that wage growth was cooling down, leaving the Federal Reserve with few […]
Mortgage lender loanDepot recently became the target of a lawsuit filed by a group of former California employees who have complaints about the company’s work conditions. The lawsuit was filed on December 23 in the Superior Court of the State of California for the County of Orange by about 40 former loanDepot employees, including loan […]
Happy New Year to everyone in the housing industry! Creating a realistic and inspiring new years resolution for your business can be a creative way to goal set in this new year. In your personal life, you may have created resolutions for eating healthy, trying new experiences or traveling more. And whether or not you […]
Nearly every loan originator is fixated on going after the purchase mortgage market in 2023 following a brutal 2022 — a year in which even some of the top producers saw their origination volume drop to 20%. That is also the case for Christopher Gallo, senior loan officer at NJ Lenders Corp. and Scotsman Guide‘s fourth […]
The U.S. residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) market continues to look bleak for 2023. This year, RMBS issuance volumes are expected to contract further from 2022 due to the impact from elevated rates, high inflation and recession possibilities. Major factors that will shape the RMBS market include a dramatic reduction in origination volume and mortgage lenders […]
Officials at the Federal Reserve this week signaled that it’s too early to declare victory in the battle to bring inflation back to the 2% target, despite some signs of improvement. That could tamp down optimism for a speedy rebound for the mortgage industry. According to the minutes from the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) […]
The 2022 housing market was savagely unhealthy, with all-time lows in inventory leading to massive bidding wars and price spikes until the Fed put a screeching halt to all of it with rate hikes that resulted in the most significant one-year spike in mortgage rate history. Housing went into a recession in June and mortgage […]
More than 160 employees from the now-shuttered Finance of America Mortgage have landed at Go Mortgage, a Columbus, Ohio-based lender. After Finance of America Companies closed its forward mortgage origination unit in October, a total of 21 FoA retail branches transitioned to Go Mortgage, said Steven Reich, a division president at Go Mortgage and former […]
The last week of the calendar year is usually a slow time for the mortgage industry, but 2022 was something else. It represented the lowest level of activity in 27 years. “With mortgage rates still well above 6% and the threat of a recession looming, mortgage applications continued to decline over the past two weeks to […]
Kathryn Amor, former senior vice president of Finance of America Companies (FoA), has taken on a new role at Guaranteed Rate as the Chicago-based lender looks to diversify its product mix amid the mortgage downturn. Amor, whose title is senior vice president and head of enterprise products at Guaranteed Rate, joined the capital markets team, […]
Mortgage technology provider FormFree gives back to those in need in Northeast Georgia in a big way. FormFree hosted its third annual Heroes Golf Classic and raised nearly $55,000 for the American Red Cross. The donations will go toward disaster relief and hosting future blood drives. The CEO of FormFree, Brent Chandler, is also on […]
Cyberattacks, particularly wire fraud through business email compromise, remain a major concern for the title industry. Attempted attacks increased significantly, according to a 2022 survey by the American Land Title Association, with 46% of respondents saying their employees receive at least one email a month attempting to change wire or payoff instructions. We sat down […]
Regina Lowrie, the first female chair of the Mortgage Bankers Association, died suddenly on Jan. 1. She was 68. Lowrie was most recently the president and CEO of Dytrix, a fintech company that enables secure financial transactions that includes closing agent management and real-time wire/ACH transfer validation for institutions. With nearly 40 years of experience […]
California-based mortgage lender loanDepot made changes to its credit line agreement with two of its warehouse lenders going into 2023 amid shrinking origination volume in the previous year. In late December, Dallas, Texas-headquartered NexBank adjusted the revolving credit note to $200 million from $268 million in the previous year, according to a U.S. Securities and […]
When it comes to offering an opinion of ‘good or bad’ on HR 7735 — the VA modernization bill — and its ultimate ability to create a better appraisal process for veteran and active duty borrowers, it’s simply too early to tell with too little information being shared on exactly what changes we should expect. […]
The housing market has been wild the last few years, making weekly data more critical. This is why I’ve created the Housing Market Tracker — a weekly analysis of purchase apps, housing inventory and mortgage rates that will be published every Monday. I want to focus on these three data lines because they will give […]
Annual home price growth continued to slow in October, with the year-over-year price gain shrinking for the seventh consecutive month, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, released last Tuesday. Nationwide home prices posted a yearly gain of 9.2% in October, bringing the index to a reading of 298.99. In September, the […]
This week’s HW+ member spotlight features Chris Mozilo, divisional vice president, West Division at Newrez Wholesale. Below, Mozilo answers questions about the housing industry: HW Media: What is your current, favorite HW+ article and why? Chris Mozilo: I enjoy anything written by Logan Mohtashami. His use of clear explanations combined with charts makes this crazy market comfortably understandable. I also love his “basketball […]
“It’s going to be competitive — thin margins, little business and LOs getting out of the industry,” Dave Krichmar, banker at Legend Lending Corporation, said of the mortgage industry in 2023. Krichmar, whose $100 million-plus origination volume in 2022 consisted of 77% purchase loans, expects LOs to be working longer hours to find referral partners, […]
As we close out 2022, it’s time to reflect on a historic year for the housing market, which was even crazier than the COVID-19 year of 2020. There are similarities and significant differences between the housing recession we’ve seen this year versus 2008, and looking at specific factors in both timeframes gives us an idea […]
Executives at Plaza Home Mortgage expect things to get worse before they get better. During the first three quarters of 2022, the San Diego, California-headquartered mortgage lender’s originations declined by about 38% compared to the same period of 2021, ending at $5.5 billion, according to Inside Mortgage Finance. Like many competitors, Plaza is losing money […]
Amid a declining housing market and volatile economy, mortgage and banking marketers may find themselves in a difficult position. While the future may seem bleak and uncertain, marketers have a unique opportunity to make a lasting impact on existing and new customers if they take advantage of this slowed pace to optimize the customer experience […]
Marty Green thinks of the housing market in 2022 as two very different movies. The first half of the year, with mortgage rates in the 3s and 4s, was like “Fast and Furious.” Houses were selling at a fever pitch in a matter of days, with multiple offers, waived contingencies and buyers paying $100,000(!) over […]
FHA Commissioner Julia Gordon ” data-medium-file=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?w=1024″ width=”1200″ height=”675″ src=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?w=1024″ alt=”FHA Commissioner Julia Gordon” class=”wp-image-373743″ srcset=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg 1200w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?resize=150,84 150w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?resize=300,169 300w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?resize=768,432 768w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?resize=1024,576 1024w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/1200x675_FHA_borrowers.jpg?resize=600,338 600w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px”>FHA Commissioner Julia Gordon The fate of Federal Housing Administration (FHA)-backed mortgages in the ongoing downcycle housing market is being compared with a canary in […]
Starting this week, I will analyze weekly data in a Housing Market Tracker article every Monday to provide a status update on the U.S. housing market and economy. This weekly tracker will give you updates on the data lines that don’t need to wait for monthly housing data reports. The housing market is one sector […]
Starting this week, I will analyze weekly data in a Housing Market Tracker article every Monday to provide a status update on the U.S. housing market and economy. This weekly tracker will give you live updates on the data lines that don’t need to wait for monthly housing data reports. The housing market is one […]
It is not surprising that the mortgage industry can be one of the more challenging industries to work in. With constantly changing trends, increased rates and an affordability crisis currently facing many homeowners, it’s understandable that we might ask ourselves, “When will things get better?” In order to maintain and even prosper during these tough […]
While new home sales did beat estimates in the latest Census report, with sales just floating around near the lows of the year, we can see with the monthly supply data that the builders still have way too much backlog of homes they need to build to raise their confidence. One of the realities of […]
New home sales, to the surprise of many, rose by 5.8% in November to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 640,000, according to data published by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Friday. New home sales data last month was much stronger than had been anticipated; the […]