News

Consumer sentiment dropped substantially in the first May reading in the University of Michigan'sConsumer Sentiment Index, from 95.9 in April down to 88.6, its lowest level since October of last year.

New Freddie Mac research reveals that despite rising rents, the majority of renters are not motivated to purchase a home and positive perceptions about renting are increasing. Harris Poll was selected by Freddie Mac to conduct the survey of more than 2,000 U.S. adults online in March 2015 to get their renting viewpoints.

VRM Mortgage Services (VRM) was recently named to DiversityBusiness’ 15th annual “Top Businesses in America” list and received multiple awards as an African American, diversity-owned and privately held business. According to a recent DiversityBusiness press release this is the second year in a row VRM has received such honors.

Real estate technology provider Pavaso and International Document Services, Inc. (IDS), mortgage document preparation provider, have announced their mortgage closing platform collaboration in a recent press release. The firms will combine Pavaso’s Digital Close, an electronic closing platform, and IDS’s document preparation system idsDoc.

Builder confidence for consumers looking to purchase newly built, single-family homes dropped two points to a level of 54 in May according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) released today. Although confidence fell two point this month, this is an increase of nine points from May 2014.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has voiced his displeasure with the provisions of a bi-partisan bill introduced in the Senate earlier this week that would limit the Fed's lending authority and end "too big to fail."

Zillow released a mortgage analysis of loan requests and quotes finding that borrowers with loans of $100,000 pay 10 percent more for every dollar borrowed due to higher interest rates and fees compared to borrowers with $400,000 home loans. Furthermore, borrowers with small loans tend to have trouble finding lenders to lend to them.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Builder Application Survey (BAS) results showed mortgage applications for new home purchases increased by 0.3 percent compared to last month for April 2015. No adjustments for typical seasonal patterns were included in this data.

Chairman of the House Financial Services Housing and Insurance Subcommittee, Blaine Luetkemeyer (R-MO) held a hearing yesterday to analyze how proposed changes to the real estate process will affect lenders and consumers.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently issued an update to mortgage-backed security (MBS) structure, also known as Single Security. The new changes to the Single Security structure are based on 23 responses to a “Request for Public Input: Proposed Single Security Structure (RFI)” released in August 2014 by the FHFA.