News

Eighty-nine markets nationwide have "fully recovered" to normalized price levels, Homes.com says in its December Local Market Index. That number is up from 87 in the previous report. Mid-size markets saw a large improvement in recovery efforts; 60 of the top 200 mid-size markets have fully recovered previous losses in home prices.

After a slight uptick in December, the annualized growth rate of Freddie Mac's mortgage portfolio dipped back into the negatives in January, with growth clocking in a rate of -1.9 percent. The GSE's monthly volume summary notes the unpaid principal balance (UPB) of mortgage-related investments decreased by approximately $7.1 billion in January.

JPMorgan Chase announced Tuesday it plans to cut an additional 6,000 mortgage banking jobs in 2014 as the bank adapts to a continued spiral in loan demand. The announced cuts come on top of an estimated headcount reduction of 11,000 last year, the bank revealed in an investor presentation. At this time in 2013, JPMorgan was shooting to bring the headcount down at its mortgage wing by 13,000-15,000 over the following two years.

A. Charles Thomas has been appointed to oversee data strategy at Wells Fargo as chief data officer, the bank announced.

The Conference Board’s Consumer Confidence Index fell from a revised 79.4 last month to 78.1 in the most recent release. The individual components making up the index were mixed, with the measure of current conditions rising nearly four points to 81.7 and the gauge of consumer expectations falling more than five points to 75.7.

S&P Dow Jones Indices released Tuesday its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices for December, showing national prices up 11.3 percent as of year-end, a slight pickup over the previous quarter’s annual improvement of 11.2 percent. The national index covers all nine U.S. census divisions. While prices were strong in Q4 compared to the previous year, they were down relative to Q3, dropping 0.3 percent.

Liquid Logics, the developers behind “the industry’s first Cloud-based loan origination system (LOS) built around the consumer’s experience,” announced the promotion of Peter Kallodaychsak to VP of business development.

The Data & Analytics division of Black Knight Financial Services released on Monday its latest Home Price Index (HPI), noting an increase of 0.1 percent in home prices to $232,000 for the month of December. The largest states experienced varying degrees of home price changes: California experienced no change; Florida rose 0.6 percent; New Jersey fell 0.1 percent; New York rose 0.7 percent; and Texas rose 0.4 percent.

Noting that “several credit metrics for 2013 vintage deals have deteriorated, including expansion of interest only loans, higher use of subordinated debt and higher LTV [loan-to-value] ratios,” the Fitch Ratings in a release put out Monday urged all title insurers to conduct thorough search and examination processes to head off future losses.

In a February survey of nearly 2,000 homebuyers, Redfin found that 16 percent of first-timers (who made up about half of the total survey group) have been held back from purchasing in the past by student loan debts. Out of all homebuyers surveyed, one-third said student debt had led them to put off purchasing for one to two years, while slightly less than that said they had to delay for four years or more.