United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) announced today that it will no longer require its brokers to use appraisal management companies to complete appraisals. The Pontiac, Michigan-based wholesale lender will instead coordinate appraisals in-house, contracting with appraisers directly, offering appraisers and brokers a way to bypass AMCs altogether, which UWM CEO Mat Ishbia characterizes as “middlemen.” During […]
Dave Sheeler, president of residential servicing and correspondent lending at Freedom Mortgage This year’s list of HousingWire Insiders radiate influence well beyond the walls of their individual companies, providing the infrastructure that upholds the whole industry. HousingWire decided to dive deeper into a few of our award winners to get a peek behind the curtain […]
The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was stagnant at 2.88% for the week ending Sept. 9, according to mortgage rates data released Thursday by Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. The week prior, mortgage rates also held steady at 2.87%. This week’s near constant mortgage rates tracked with the 10-year Treasury yield, which rose slightly and then tapered off […]
The Office of the Comptroller of Currency announced today that it is moving to gut the controversial Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) rule issued in 2020. Instead, the agency is proposing to replace the federal anti-redlining rule with rules adopted jointly by the OCC, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Board of Governors of the Federal […]
Maryland’s state legislature has pushed through a rule that could widen the pool of eligible applicants vying to become homeowners by requiring lenders to use alternative methods of evaluating a borrower’s creditworthiness. HB 1213, which will go into effect on Oct.1, will obligate lenders to consider an applicant’s history of rent, utility payments, school attendance […]
Mortgage application volume declined by 1.9% as of Sept. 3, falling to its lowest level since mid-July, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s weekly survey published on Wednesday. On an unadjusted basis, MBA’s index decreased by 3% compared to the previous week. Pushing the decline was the refinance index, which dipped by 3% from the […]
Four months into the new year and conversations among mortgage executives were focused right back on the same issue that always happens after a mortgage boom — LO comp. Three mortgage executives were virtually gathered to talk about the routine topic at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Spring conference in April. The session was a part […]
Homeowners withdrew $63 billion in equity in the second quarter of 2021, according to the latest numbers from Black Knight, the most in a single quarter in nearly 15 years. There is still $9 trillion in tappable equity, a 37% increase year-over-year. The driver is, of course, spiking home prices in most places. Home values […]
“We knew deep down it was simply the right thing to do,” said Austin Niemiec, Executive Vice President of Rocket Pro TPO. “Baking a 50-basis point credit into our pricing isn’t something to scoff at given the amount of volume our partners bring in on a weekly and monthly basis, but we wanted to do […]
One of the biggest challenges facing the mortgage industry is increasing homeownership in underserved communities. To discuss some of these challenges and potential solutions, HousingWire invited Laura Brandao, president and partner of American Financial Resources, to participate in the Expanding Homeownership panel at HW Annual on Sept. 27-28. The panel will explore how the mortgage […]
The past 18 months have been full of twists and turns for the housing economy. From record low interest rates to inventory shortages and soaring home prices, the pandemic has been keeping the industry on its toes. That’s why HousingWire asked Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami to speak on the economics of housing at HW Annual, […]
Before Hurricane Ida made landfall in New Orleans, many of the city’s lower-income homeowners were already struggling. Of the 35,380 Federal Housing Administration-insured loans in New Orleans, 17.9%, or 6,600, were delinquent as of August, per an analysis of Department of Housing and Urban Development data from the American Enterprise Institute. That puts it behind […]
“By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.” While John Wooden was not the first to utter these sentiments, it became one of his more well-known mantras and undoubtedly the soundtrack to more than one of his 10 national championships. For Wooden and his teams, the preparations were made during the off-season, in practice, […]
In a change that is likely to make many in the reverse mortgage industry turn their heads, Reverse Mortgage Funding, LLC (RMF) announced on Wednesday that it is lowering its minimum eligible age for its Equity Elite proprietary reverse mortgage product suite to 55, making it the only product in the American reverse mortgage industry […]
The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was flat at 2.87% for the week ending in Sept. 2, according to mortgage rates data released Thursday by Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. The week prior, mortgage rates also held steady at 2.87%. This week’s near constant mortgage rates tracked with the 10-year Treasury yield, which has hovered around 1.30 for […]
CU Direct’s Origence, which provides mortgage loan tech to lenders, has laid off nearly three dozen workers. A company spokesperson said Origence laid off 34 employees on Aug. 17, in multiple departments, as it continues to “build efficiency in its technology operations.” In a written statement, Bob Child, COO of Origence, said that letting go […]
As the mortgage industry moves further into the digital era, lenders are continuing to see the value and ease of cloud-based lending to simplify outdated processes. That’s why HousingWire has invited Tim Mayopoulos, president of Blend, to sit down for a Q&A at HW Annual on June 27 in Dallas to discuss this digital transformation of […]
The reverse mortgage industry is perhaps overly familiar with having a need to fact-check certain claims about the product category made by financial commentators, some of which are very well-known by the general public while others are simply ubiquitous enough to warrant the need for competing educational materials. However, one reverse mortgage industry professional has […]
Brena NathHW+ Managing Editor Did you dream about getting into the mortgage industry? It’s a question — an often joked about question — that I think we’ve all heard before when chatting with others in the space. Personally, my own answer is no, but here I am nearly eight years later still in it, albeit […]
Mortgage applications dipped 2.4% for the week ending Aug. 27, with a notable drop in refinance applications, according to the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. On an unadjusted basis, the weekly mortgage application survey by the trade organization decreased 3% compared to the prior week. The refinance index fell 4% but was still […]
Princeton Mortgage CEO Rich Weidel When Rich Weidel took over his family-owned lender Princeton Mortgage, the company had funded 11 loans in January of 2018, employed about a dozen people and had zero loan officers. Just three years later, they’re on track to do about $1.5 billion in mortgage originations and were ranked as the […]
Cadence Bancorporation, parent of Cadence Bank, reached separate settlements with the Department of Justice and the Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency totaling over $8.5 million for redlining practices, according to the federal government. The DOJ alleged that between 2013 to 2017, the bank violated the Fair Housing Act and the Equal […]
The number of loans in forbearance stood unchanged from last week at 3.25% for the week ending on Aug. 22. According to the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association, 1.6 million homeowners are in forbearance plans. The share of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans in forbearance remained the same, at 1.66%. The share […]
The financial planning community is often sought after by reverse mortgage professionals as a referral source, as planners can help provide necessary clarity to their clients who are seeking the preservation of financial assets and continuing stability. This is especially true for those who may be living on a fixed income, and is coupled with […]
2021 has seen an unprecedented number of cyberattacks against financial institutions, prompting Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell to list cybersecurity attacks as one of the gravest risks to the industry and the overall economy. That’s why we’ve invited cybersecurity expert Selim Aissi to headline our HW Annual event June 27-28 in Dallas. Aissi is the […]
Luke Johnson won’t be accused of avoiding controversy to gin up business for his fintech mortgage lending shop, Neat Capital. You might say he’s actively courting it. “In the financial services community, most companies are afraid of taking an active voice in any community health issue, or any issue of importance because it is politicized […]
Mortgages changed my life. Like most mortgage industry professionals, I fell into the business. Most of us don’t grow up telling everyone that we want to change the world by selling, processing, underwriting and closing mortgages. Unless, perhaps, you are my five-year-old daughter and six-year-old son. They both make it known that they will “do […]
A recent syndicated article on racial bias from The Markup on racial bias, published by ABC news, AP, Market Watch and more, has drawn a great deal of attention from trade groups, policy makers and housing advocates with support from some and attacks from others. The story, “The secret bias hidden in mortgage-approval algorithms,” included […]
As I observe Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Fudge staffing out her management teams, a large hole remains unfilled. In fact, this hole has not been filled permanently in almost five years. The position is an important one, a fact that I know firsthand as the last permanent appointment to the role of president […]
Analytics vendor CoreLogic announced Thursday that it has entered into an enterprise agreement with ICE Mortgage Technology to integrate and automate its core solutions on ICE’s platform, enabling a more streamlined workflow for lenders. Via the Encompass Partner Connect, a cloud-native third-party-service integration platform, CoreLogic will update critical data-driven processes and make these solutions available to […]
The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage held steady at 2.87% for the week ending in August 26, according to mortgage rates data released Thursday by Freddie Mac‘s PMMS. The week prior, mortgage rates declined slightly to 2.86%. This week’s near constant mortgage rates may not yet reflect a rise in U.S. Treasury yields, which ticked up […]
Summary List Placement Filings for unemployment insurance jumped from pandemic-era lows last week as the country crept closer to the expiration of federal UI aid. Weekly jobless claims reached an unadjusted 353,000 last week, the Labor Department announced Thursday morning. That compares to a median estimate of 350,000 claims from economists surveyed by Bloomberg. The print […]
Summary List Placement It’s always been the ultimate dream of remote work: living in luxury, somewhere cheap, on a big-city salary. For the first year of the pandemic, many white-collar professionals got to play this game of geographic arbitrage, decamping to places like Austin, Atlanta, Denver, or Boise while keeping their San Francisco or New […]
Summary List Placement If you’ve ever taken out a loan, held cash in a savings account, saved for retirement, or received a stimulus check during the pandemic, the Federal Reserve played a role in your financial life. Most Americans know next to nothing about it — more than 75% polled by Ipsos for Axios said […]
Questioning First-time homebuyer tax credits ” data-image-caption=”” data-medium-file=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?w=300″ data-large-file=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?w=1024″ loading=”lazy” width=”1200″ height=”694″ src=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?w=1024″ alt=”Questioning First-time homebuyer tax credits” class=”wp-image-304484″ srcset=”https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg 1200w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?resize=150,87 150w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?resize=300,174 300w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?resize=768,444 768w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?resize=1024,592 1024w, https://www.housingwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/house-uestions-HW.jpg?resize=600,347 600w” sizes=”(max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px”> The much-talked-about $15,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit has made another appearance in Washington, D.C., this time as part of a […]
Summary List Placement In a win for Democrats, the House voted on Tuesday to advance their $3.5 trillion budget reconciliation bill that included provisions addressing the climate crisis. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said those provisions, along with the infrastructure bill, will help make major headway in combating climate change. Schumer wrote a Dear Colleague […]
Prior to the Great Recession, private label securitizations (PLS) constituted a majority of all residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) issued. In the intervening years, the makeup of the RMBS market has changed significantly and, today, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and Ginnie Mae are responsible for approximately 99% of RMBS issuance. For a variety of reasons, including […]
Summary List Placement The US has been steadily recovering from major pandemic-related job losses experienced in the spring of 2020. However, not all states may get back to pre-pandemic levels of employment by the end of this year. During the first wave of the pandemic, the US lost more than 22 million jobs in just […]
Summary List Placement The labor shortage is trash. Like, literally, there is more trash lying around as local governments struggle to hire more sanitation workers. Bloomberg’s CityLab reports that government jobs are still well below their pre-pandemic state — about 780,000 are missing — and that could be impacting everything from trash getting picked up […]
Summary List Placement December and March stimulus packages gave states a combined $46.5 billion to help tenants as emergency rental assistance. But as of July, they’ve only sent 11% of that aid out. President Joe Biden first extended the pandemic-era ban on evictions through the end of July to help tenants who were behind on rent. At […]
Mortgage applications rose 1.6% on the week ending Aug. 20, moving in concert with a drop in Treasury yields, according to the latest report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The market composite index moved 1% on an unadjusted basis from the prior week. Refis ticked up 1% from the prior week and purchase mortgage applications […]
Summary List Placement Extra-long trucks could help solve supply chain issues during a driver shortage in the UK, an expert says. These trucks, which are being tested by the UK’s Department for Transport, are two meters longer than standard, which means they can carry more goods and therefore cut down on the number of journeys […]
Mortgage industry groups on Tuesday made their voices heard in response to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s proposed reinstatement of its 2013 disparate impact rule. Numerous industry stakeholders asked HUD to make some changes to the regulation to raise and further explain the threshold for disparate impact claims. A homeowners insurer trade group, […]
Summary List Placement Baby boomers are sounding the alarm on inflation, bracing for the fastest price growth since the 1980s and fearing for their life savings. Millennials aren’t as bothered, and most experts are on their side. The Consumer Price Index — a popular measure of broad price growth — rose 0.5% in July, continuing […]
Summary List Placement A top House Republican indicated that GOP lawmakers are unlikely to support lifting the debt ceiling and instead put the onus on Democrats to do so, raising the risk of a perilous showdown that could engulf both chambers of Congress this fall. Rep. Kevin Brady, ranking Republican on House Ways and Means, […]