News

Mortgage Master, based in Walpole, Massachusetts, selected Karen Menza to lead the company's Midwest operation team as regional operations manager.

Capacity limits may be playing a significant role in keeping first-time homebuyers out of the credit market, according to Federal Reserve Governor Elizabeth Duke. As the ratio of refinance applications to the number of real estate credit employees rises, loans are taking longer to process as the procedure becomes more thorough. Adding to that, Duke said, is the problem that real estate credit employment has risen relatively slowly in response. As a result, borrowers with hard-to-complete loans or low credit scores have been crowded out.

A court of appeals upheld a lower court ruling against MBIA's claim seeking money from FDIC's sale of IndyMac Bank.

Trulia announced the beta launch of Trulia Suggests, a new, personalized, and visually engaging way for home buyers to discover homes.

GMH Mortgage Services LLC, a nationally recognized mortgage banker headquartered in Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, announced a new hire. Frank DiMaio joined the company as SVP of national retail sales.

A major investor in residential mortgage-backed security trusts filed a complaint against Nationstar over its selling of non-performing loans backing securities.

FDIC announced Friday the closure of Frontier Bank, based in LaGrange, Georgia. Frontier Bank mark's Georgia's first bank failure in 2013 and is the nation's fourth failure overall this year. By the same time in 2012, there had been 12 bank collapses.

According to the Flow of Funds report for Q4 2012, household assets grew to $79.5 trillion in the fourth quarter, an increase of $1.3 trillion--not too shabby. Household financial assets were up $784 billion to $54.4 billion but home equity (the value of household real estate less loans against that real estate) grew $452.8 billion, the result of two moving parts: real estate values (which increased) and household mortgage liabilities, which dropped. Once the dust settled, it meant equity in household real estate assets moved to 46.6 percent in the Q4.

Strong demand, tight inventory, and positive signs among broader economic indicators led Capital Economics to revise its previous price gain forecast up to 8 percent.

Lender Processing Services, Inc., (LPS) announced the launch of new mortgage insurance (MI) products through the LPS Loan Quality Gateway.