Real estate news

• Congress reaches highway deal without controversial use of Fannie, Freddie fees

  01-12-2015 23:31
  
  Thanks to a landmark agreement between the Democrats and Republicans in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, it’s looking increasingly likely that the fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to guarantee loans will not be used to fund new roads.
  
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• Genworth survey: Compliance with TRID still weighs heavily on housing industry

  01-12-2015 20:58
  
  As the two-month anniversary of the implementation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Know Before You Owe mortgage disclosure rule approaches, concerns over complying with the TRID rules are still weighing heavily on mortgage industry professionals, a new survey showed.
  
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• [Report] The housing market can withstand a Fed interest rate hike

  01-12-2015 20:26
  
  Despite some concerns that an interest rate hike could devastate the housing market, a new report from Capital Economics said that housing looks well placed to withstand a rate hike. However, there are more issues that the industry needs to overcome other than just rising interest rates.
  
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• HomeUnion expands again; begins lending to single-family rental investors

  01-12-2015 20:11
  
  HomeUnion, an online real-estate investment management firm, is expanding from helping investors identify single-family rental properties to purchase to actually helping them buy the properties. HomeUnion announced Tuesday that it is launching a new division, HomeUnion Lending, which will focus on lending to single-family rental investors.
  
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• HW Vanguard Awards: Leadership has never been more important

  01-12-2015 19:54
  
  We created the HW Vanguard Awards to highlight the leaders in every sector of housing who are forging a new path toward profitability and sustainability. We received a lot of outstanding nominations, but every one of the 27 executives we chose in this first year were clear winners.
  
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• CoreLogic: Home prices rise 6.8% in October

  01-12-2015 19:35
  
  According to the latest Home Price Index from CoreLogic, home prices continued to post "healthy" gains in the month of October. And CoreLogic expects that prices are going to continue to trend in the same direction as we head into 2016.
  
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• loanDepot closes first $150M securitization of personal loans

  01-12-2015 18:38
  
  The online mortgage lender officially moved into marketplace lending on May 13, becoming the first national nonbank lender to offer both home and personal loans nationwide. Since then, loanDepot has funded more than $250 million in personal loans, leading to the company’s first $150 million securitization of unsecured personal loans.
  
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• What's driving mortgage lending behavior?

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  That lenders may be holding back a bit is not surprising as lessons from behavioral finance studies suggest that individuals tend to weight recent experience more than the past. Applied to the mortgage business and compounded by rising compliance costs, recent experience with heavy credit losses of the crisis could be dampening management enthusiasm for credit expansion in an otherwise expanding, albeit tepid economy.
  
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• Trailblazers: Tavant Technologies

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Tavant adds flexibility to its clients’ business and technology initiatives by keeping their investments in large enterprise systems (such as an LOS) intact and providing a “surround and extend” strategy and infrastructure that allows them to provide unique business differentiators to their customer base.
  
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• Trailblazers: SecureView

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Boarded houses advertise a property’s vacancy, increasing vandalism and other crimes. Seeing the neighborhood blight that resulted from these plywood-boarded properties inspired Robert Klein, founder of Safeguard Properties, to develop a new product that solved these problems: SecureView.
  
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• The next big thing in SFR: Lending to landlords

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Tighter regulation and higher risk aversion — both to actual risk and to headline risk — in the world of mainstream lending mean that despite the opportunity available with SFR investors, traditional lenders have by and large not jumped on this opportunity. That leaves these nontraditional national lenders a bigger share of the pie in a market that in the past has been largely the domain of local and regional hard-money lenders.
  
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• Tech Innovator: Centric Technology Solutions refines the appraisal process

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  For appraisers, the platform’s embedded guidelines mean fewer revisions, so they can not only complete more valuations, but do so with greater clarity. New appraisers can be brought on board quickly with educational opportunities built into the platform, which could shorten the appraiser’s learning curve by 60% to 80%.
  
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• Hot Seat: Patrick Nackley of Superior Home Services

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  We don’t want servicers to get shorted on pricing, depreciation, being paid overhead and profit. If you are maximizing the value of each settlement and anticipating using that money to repair, you are reducing the incidents of corporate contribution.
  
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• Embracing the science of income analysis

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Despite the ever-increasing pressures in this area, most lenders still approach income by leaving it up to the underwriter to pull everything together. If technology can improve processes in so many areas of mortgage banking, why can’t it add efficiency to one of the most traditional aspects of the loan process, income calculation?
  
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• Economies of scale: Why consolidation may be just what SFR needs

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  On the multi-borrower side, the potential for volume is massively larger than on the single-family side, but the challenge until now has always been on how to scale this side of the business.
  
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• Company Spotlight: LenderLive

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  As a true end-to-end solutions provider, LenderLive specializes in enabling key functions for a lender’s organization including loan origination, document management and document preparation, settlement services, loan servicing, due diligence and operational compliance. Moreover, LenderLive’s expansion into loan subservicing comes at the right time for mortgage companies, banks and credit unions looking for help with subservicing. LenderLive offers these companies a complete subservi
  
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• 5.8 million foreclosures, and counting

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Over the past eight years, housing counselors and the mortgage servicing industry have learned a lot, and it’s our joint responsibility to avoid the mistakes of the past, to maintain momentum, and to create new pathways for homeowner-centric loss mitigation practices that have sustainable homeownership as the No. 1 objective.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: Nationwide Title Clearing

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Nationwide Title Clearing's broad service offerings range from recording and title clearing services for loan originators to post-closing audits, mortgage assignment, pre-sale audits and payoff services — covering the entire lifecycle of a loan. The company has seen a stunning 350% growth in the last four years and can track and fulfill county document requirements in all 3600+ recording jurisdictions nationwide.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: National Real Tax Tracking

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  National Real Tax Tracking provides lenders, servicers, investors and title companies with the information they need for research, due diligence and compliance. By functioning as an outsourced tax division, NRTT empowers companies to research, monitor and manage everything they need related to property tax status, in a compliant and transparent way.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: Mason-McDuffie Mortgage Corp.

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Mason-McDuffie utilizes the Kaizen philosophy of continuous improvement, which places a high value on each employee and empowers them to spot and eliminate waste. From a practical standpoint, it means that the company’s collaborative structure is focused on making changes, monitoring results and adjusting accordingly.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: Global DMS

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Global DMS has developed an appraisal work-flow engine — eTrac Enterprise — that gives users a single-source valuation management platform to centralize all aspects of the appraisal process. This work-flow engine eliminates the need for manual intervention within specified processes because all of the steps and notifications are automated.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: Equifax

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Today, many lenders verify an applicant’s employment and income themselves, often by having consumers provide W-2s and pay stubs. This is not only a time-intensive process that relies on consumers, but it also increases the risk to lenders due to a potential for fraud because the employer is removed from the process.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: Black Knight Financial Services

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  To support lenders and their network of settlement agents with their efforts at TRID compliance, Black Knight’s Closing Insight solution offers online integrations with major title and settlement platforms to facilitate lenders’ efforts to generate the new closing disclosure forms and enable lenders and settlement agents to reconcile fees within mandated timelines.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: Arch MI

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  With its commitment to real innovation, including Arch MI RateStar and Arch Mortgage Guaranty Company, Arch MI has proven itself to be the partner that can transform and expand lending horizons.
  
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• 2015 Trailblazers: Alight Mortgage Lending

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  Alight Mortgage Lending helps answer key questions like: What happens if mortgage rates skyrocket? Will it be better to open a new branch this quarter or next? Is there enough cash to build franchise value by retaining servicing? Using Alight, lenders can make this kind of scenario-driven analysis a critical part of day-to-day business for all teams across their enterprise.
  
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• 2015 HW Vanguard Award winners

  01-12-2015 06:00
  
  All of the sectors of the housing economy now — real estate, lending, servicing and investing — are navigating unchartered territory. The challenges are new and the processes scrutinized as never before. Against that backdrop, we at HousingWire thought it was appropriate to recognize the tremendous leadership within the mortgage space with our first annual HW Vanguard Awards. Companies in our business couldn’t have survived the crisis, or formed in this brave new world, without
  
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• TRID is a real obstacle to mortgage process

  01-12-2015 02:05
  
  Despite reports saying that TRID hasn’t caused any major lending delays, the key word in all the reports is 'yet.'
  
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• Buy this super-green California home, get a free Tesla

  01-12-2015 00:28
  
  Over the years, we’ve seen some creative efforts when it comes to trying to sell a home. About this time last year, the owner of a 16,000-square-foot mansion in Dallas offered up a free 2015 Bentley to the real estate agent or Realtor who secured a buyer for their home – in addition to their normal commission. But a new listing in California takes the automobile sweetener to a higher, and greener, level.
  
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