Headlines

Freddie Mac will be reporting its financial results for the first quarter of 2015 on Tuesday, May 5, according to an announcement from the GSE. The results will be announced before the U.S. financial markets open via a conference call at 9 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, May 5.

Accurate Group, a leading provider of real estate appraisal, title, and compliance services based in Northeast Ohio, announced that it has made two promising employee acquisitions.

This week, Freddie Mac released the results of its Quarterly Refinance Analysis for the first quarter of this year, revealing that borrowers lowered their monthly mortgage payment and shortened their long-term payment by taking advantage unexpectedly low mortgage rates. Refinance activity accounted for 63 percent of all single-family originations.

Altisource announced it is launching its Residential Investor One Cooperative, which will help investors gain access to vendors and services in order to build profitable home investment portfolios. The cooperative was created to provide its members with savings and efficiencies when navigating individual residential real estate or larger home portfolios.

The fact that the Enterprises remain in conservatorship of the FHFA has been a contentious topic among lawmakers and housing industry stakeholders in recent months. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac returned to profitability in 2012, but those profits declined substantially from 2013 to 2014. Recent reports, including one from the FHFA Inspector General, have warned that the profitability of the GSEs might not continue even though the conservatorship probably will.

The FHFA now requires that Federal Home Loan Banks and their Office of Finance include demographic data related to their boards of directors in their annual minority and women inclusion reports to the agency. The banks also must now include descriptions of their outreach activities and strategies designed to promote diversity in nominating or soliciting nominees for positions on boards of directors.

Inspectors have the ability to collect property condition data and corresponding photo evidence using Safeguard's Mobile Inspections Quality Control suite, which includes INSPI Mobile, INSPI QC, and MapAlert. Inspectors can submit real-time results from the field using the suite.

According to the FOMC’s statement, this decision was made to “support continued progress toward maximum employment and price stability” and largely factored in energy prices, household spending and incomes, unemployment rates, inflation and other economic influencers. Despite opting to continue with its current interest rates, the FOMC’s statement did recognize that increases in the future are possible.

The index, an indicator of sales based on contract signings, was released this morning. It showed a 1.1 percent increase in pending sales for March and an 11.1 percent increase over the same time last year. This marks the third month in a row the sales have risen and the seventh year that pending sales numbers have improved.

Plain City, Ohio-based A2Z Field Services has announced the retirement of its president, Bill McMullen, and the promotion of longtime SVP Amie Sparks-Beebe to the position of president and CEO with the company.