Origination

Recent results from Trulia’s Rent vs. Buy Report reveals that purchasing a home with a traditional 30-year mortgage and 20 percent down payment is cheaper than renting, but additional fees from the homeowner association (HOA) can make renting seem more appealing especially for New York and Honolulu residents whose HOA fees are considerably higher.

A new Quicken Loans study reveals that appraiser home value opinions fell below homeowner estimates in April according to the company’s Home Price Perception Index (HPPI). Quicken Loans is the nation’s second largest retail mortgage lender.

Millennials, which are viewed by many analysts as the key to driving the housing market recovery, are actively seeking credit but largely being denied, according to a white paper released Tuesday by ID Analytics titled "Millennials: High Risk or Untapped Opportunity?"

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) recently issued a bulletin to help mortgage lenders evade illegal discrimination against applicants that include vouchers from the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Homeownership Program in their income when applying for a mortgage loan. This type of discrimination may violate federal fair lending protections.

Nationwide Biweekly Administration, Inc., Loan Payment Administration LLC, and the company’s owner, Daniel Lipsky, are being sued by the Consumer Financial Bureau (CFPB) in federal district court. The CFPB claims that Nationwide falsely advertises the interest savings consumers will achieve through a biweekly mortgage payment program called the “Interest Minimizer” and deceives consumers about the price of the program.

The nearly two-month long court battle between the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and Nomura Holdings came to an end Monday when a federal judge found the bank liable for selling shoddy mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac prior to the 2008 financial crisis.

The House Financial Services Committee has issued subpoenas to two federal government agencies and a branch of the central bank requesting information and documents regarding the government's "too big to fail" designation and the Obama Administration's debt ceiling, according to an announcement Monday on the Committee's website.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research’s (NBER’s) new working paper “Why Do Cities Matter? Local Growth and Aggregate Growth”, high-productivity markets are not the main contributors to economic growth due to limited housing affordability options.

According to a National Association of Realtors (NAR) recent study, rising prices of homes have helped homeowners build housing wealth, but the research found a worsening inequality in homeownership gains in metro areas.

In their Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS), Freddie Mac found that mortgage rates inched to the highest levels seen in nearly a month for the week ending May 7, 2015. Len Kiefer, deputy chief economist at Freddie Mac, attributes the rise in part to a selloff in German bonds that drove U.S. Treasury yields above 2.2 percent.