Fannie Research Shows House Price Decline for Some Oil States: The prospect of an oil bust draws comparisons to the housing slump of the 1980s in Fannie Mae’s research released Aug. 28. While most Americans enjoyed lower gasoline prices over that period, severe employment losses occurred within the oil industry, and many oil-producing states experienced general economic slowdowns and declining house prices. North Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska are most at risk. …
With the stock market suffering major losses the past 10 days, investors in equities are bleeding red ink, but mortgage bankers are salivating at the prospect of higher application volumes thanks to declining interest rates. “We’re at the tail-end of the home-buying season when volume drops, but my members are anticipating an increase in refis,” said Glen Corso, executive director of Community Mortgage Lenders of America. The newfound optimism comes courtesy of China ...
The FHA late this month announced a new tool to supplement Neighborhood Watch’s compare ratio to give lenders a better sense of their performance and, at the same time, ease concerns about lending to higher-risk borrowers. FHA lenders welcomed the long-anticipated performance metric although concerns linger about lender liability. Nonetheless, for The Collingwood Group, a Washington, DC-based advisory firm, the question is whether the tool represents a ...
The Collingwood Group says disruption may come to the mortgage finance industry because the current business model is too challenging, inefficient, costly and unresponsive to customer and business needs. “With no fundamental changes to origination processes in decades, lost efficiency, growing regulatory hurdles, high costs and low profits, there is little doubt the mortgage industry is ripe for disruption,” the firm said in a recent paper. Marketplace lenders and crowdfunders ...
The Blackstone Group has emerged as the “Big Kahuna” of mortgage company acquisitions this year, gobbling up – or agreeing to gobble up – at least five mortgage banking firms or a majority of their assets. To date, most of the purchases have centered on small- to medium-sized originators, except for its latest conquest: a majority stake in Stearns Holdings, LLC, parent company of Stearns Lending, the nation’s 12th largest originator. Although Blackstone is publicly traded ...
Commercial banks and thrifts reported a hefty increase in profits from their mortgage-banking operations during the second quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call reports. The industry generated $6.09 billion in mortgage-banking income during the second quarter, a 52.2 percent improvement over the first three months of the year. It was the highest income for the banking industry since the second quarter of 2013, when ... [Includes one data chart]
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit this week affirmed rulings from lower courts, noting that the “change in terms” agreement between Lapides and the lender was unenforceable.
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