News

Aspen Grove Solutions (AGS), founded in Boston, Massachusetts, recently announced in a press release the promotion of Ron Briggs to the position of SVP of business development, effective immediately. Aspen Grove is a leading enterprise provider of property related technology solutions for REO, short sale, asset management, inspections, property preservation, vendor management, and complianc

In an examination of whether millennials are helping inner cities experience a rebirth, the authors of ProTeck Valuation's Home Value Forecast (HVF) for May determined that while some urban areas with populations dominated by millennials are thriving, urban recovery is still happening slowly nationwide, according to a press release from ProTeck on Monday.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has named Richard K. Green, University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate director, as a senior advisor for housing finance, according to an announcement from HUD. Green, one of the nation's pre-eminent housing economists, will replace Edward Golding, who was named principal deputy assistant secretary with HUD at the end of March. Green's one-year appointment as senior advisor with HUD will begin on July 1.

Construction spending during April 2015 was estimated at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of $1,006.1 billion for April, 2.2 percent above March’s revised estimate of $984 billion, the U.S. Census Bureau Department of Commerce announced today.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Des Moines (FHLB Des Moines) announced today in a press release that it will merge with the Federal Home Loan Bank of Seattle (FHLB Seattle). More details concerning this new combination will be included in a related Form 8-K that FHLB Des Moines will file with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Eric Rosengren, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston, said in his speech called “One Policymaker’s Wait for Better Economic Data” at the Capital Workforce Partners “Workforce Stars” Event in Hartford, Connecticut that, predictions concerning the economy have been much weaker than expected in the first half of this year. He also noted that policymakers should wait until the economy picks up before raising short-term interest rates.

A working paper titled, “What’s Behind the Non-Bank Mortgage Boom?”, released by the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at Harvard's Kennedy School found that, non-bank lending institutions have increased their market share of agency purchase mortgage originations from 27 percent in mid-2012 to 48 percent in late 2014. The study is authored by senior fellow, Marshall Lux, and research assistant, Robert Greene.

Fannie Mae’s gross mortgage portfolio has decreased for the second consecutive month at a compound annualized rate of 17.4 percent in April, according to Fannie Mae’s April 2015 Monthly Volume Summary, released today. The GSE’s book of business decreased in April, dropping at a compound annualized rate of 2.1 percent, from $3.13 trillion in April 2014 to $3.11 trillion in April 2015, according to the summary. The book of business has only seen one positive compounded growth rate increase of 0.4 percent this year in March.

In its second of three estimates of real gross domestic product (GDP) growth for the first quarter released Friday, the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) issued a downward revision of what analysts had already deemed "paltry" growth of 0.2 percent in the advance estimate for Q1 reported at the end of April. According to the BEA's second estimate for Q1, which is based on more complete source data than were available for the advance estimate, the GDP contracted at an annual rate of minus 0.7 percent.

The Federal Housing and Finance Agency (FHFA) recently released their first quarter refinance report, revealing that refinance volume has increased in March, while mortgage rates remained near 20 month lows in February. The Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP) had 31,648 refinances, bringing the total refinances through this program to 3,302,102 since it began.