Origination

Life insurer MetLife announced Tuesday that it will cease originating forward residential loans and exit the business entirely. The company said in a statement that it would continue to service existing customers, even while it ceases accepting new loan applications for forward mortgages. MetLife also said that it would continue to originate reverse mortgages. MetLife said it expected to incur as much as $90 to $110 million in costs after tax next year for leaving the business.

Home prices ticked down on average by 0.8 percent in October, reaching $200,000 and marking the fifth straight month for declines for industry figures, according to Lender Processing Services. In releasing the national home price index, the analytics provider also said that November may have fielded about 0.5 percent in home prices declines. The new numbers for home prices follow ongoing declines from 2006, at which time U.S. housing inventory amounted to $10.6 trillion ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô and since fell to $7.5 trillion.

Mortgage lender American Financial Resources, Inc., has added a new national sales director. AFR recently announced the appointment of Paul Impagliazzo to the position, and he will now be responsible for the company's wholesale and correspondent lending divisions.

Mortgage Contracting Services has appointed a new chief information officer, with the announcement that Tod Phelps will join the firm. In his role for the company, Phelps will be responsible for developing new strategies for all information technology initiatives.

Gaining industry approval, SharperLending LLC has announced that Veros Real Estate Solutions confirmed its appraisal firewall platform for integration with the Uniform Collateral Data Portal (UCDP). SharperLending released its appraisal firewall interface to the UCDP on December 10, and Veros has now declared the web-based program operationally ready for submissions.

Fannie Mae CEO Michael Williams announced Tuesday that he will resign once the mortgage giant selects his successor. A 21-year veteran with Fannie Mae, he accepted an appointment to head up the mortgage company just as the FHFA placed it into conservatorship during the financial crisis. The announcement follows Ed Haldeman├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós decision last fall to step down as CEO of Freddie Mac, just after the two executives saw themselves and eight others in senior leadership positions embroiled in scandal over multimillion-dollar bonuses.

Mortgage Cadence, LLC, has been selected by Generation Mortgage Company to replace the company's current lending system. Generation will begin using Mortgage Cadence's Orchestrator, Finale Document Services, and Opus systems to gain enhanced end-to-end support for its mortgage lending business.

Vertical Capital Markets Group has announced the debut of the mortgage-based Vertical Capital Income Fund. Targeting the development of a quality portfolio of mortgages for investors, Vertical's newly launched project seeks to capitalize on low-priced loans.

Interest rates for the benchmark 30-year fixed-rate mortgage smashed new records for Zillow, which reported current rates falling as low as 3.71 percent, the lowest in survey history for the real estate Web site. Zillow found the newest numbers for mortgage rates with Zillow Mortgage Marketplace, which it sources from anonymous quotes and releases weekly. The 30-year fixed-rate loan fell to new lows from 3.73 percent seen last week, and hovered at rates as low as 3.67 percent Monday morning. Zillow reported rates for 15-year loans falling to 3.03 percent.

A surge in suits involving mortgage-backed securities propelled litigation cases for mortgage servicers to 218 over the third quarter last year, according to a recent index. Mortgage-backed securities litigation rose by 36 cases over the third quarter, up from 26 seen from the last quarter and just 12 in the third quarter 2010. Foreclosure-related suits also went up from 67 in the second quarter to 90 in the third quarter, followed shortly by litigation from investors, which leapt from 50 to 82 over the same time frame.