Servicing

Three bank failures took place Friday, raising the national tally this year to 31 as fewer community banks fall under, compared with recent years. State regulators shuttered Palakta, Florida-based Putnam State Bank, Marietta, Georgia-based Security Exchange Bank, and Lynchburg, Tennessee-based The Farmers Bank of Lynchburg. The cost to the FDIC: $100 million. With the bank failure tally at 31 this year, the numbers mark a gradual decline in the rate of closure for community banks compared with every year since the financial crisis.

The nation's housing developments need to grow up. There are many challenges to address: Support services to allow seniors to age in place, financing residential developments ranging from independent living facilities to nursing homes, creating affordable housing for low-income and low-net-worth seniors, and enabling older homeowners to tap accumulated equity. Fannie Mae's Economic & Strategic Research Group recently published a Data Note detailing the characteristics and housing consumption of the nation's elderly to get a clearer picture of the needs that must be addressed soon.

Standard & Poor's has reaffirmed Clayton Holdings LLC's standing as a third-party due diligence provider for residential mortgage-backed securities. The company's announcement follows S&P's annual review of the company's rating.

Another comedian is set to sell his California estate. Funnyman and host of The Late, Late Show on CBS, Craig Ferguson, has put his Los Angeles home on the market for $1.995 million.

As the economy flounders, Americans think community planners should play a large role in helping the country recover, according to a poll released Thursday by the American Planning Association. The research study showed that two-thirds of Americans believe their communities need more planning to promote economic recovery, and 44 percent said they don't believe their community is doing enough to promote recovery. Fifty-one percent of respondents expressed an interest in participating in community planning efforts.

A new director of sales has been appointed at New American Funding. The national mortgage lender and Fannie Mae seller and servicer has hired Darren Kidder to fill the role.

Wells Fargo recently announced that it will accept refinance applications for homeowners with FHA mortgages only if their loans are serviced in-house by the mortgage lender. Vickee Adams, a spokesperson for Wells, said in an e-mailed statement that the lender currently services more than 500,000 customers with FHA home loans that could qualify to save money by refinancing under changes at the agency. The lender will start accepting only refinance applications for in-house loans on Tuesday.

Despite the deteriorating situation in Europe, the United States housing market's recent gains should drive up stocks valuations for building products companies in the near future, Barclays said in a report Tuesday. Barclays├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ó U.S. Building Products & Homebuilding report shows that valuations for building products stocks under the institution's coverage are in the lower half of their historical trading ranges, largely due to "fairly lackluster" first-quarter earnings caused by lag between home purchases and building products sales. Financial crises in the euro zone are also driving down building products stocks.

According to Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the key to the housing market recovery is job growth. "What the for-sale market needs most is a sustained increase in employment to bring household growth back to its long-term pace," the Joint Center said in its recent report, The State of the Nation's Housing 2012. Multifamily starts rose 54 percent and home improvement spending rose 0.6 percent over the year in 2011 and single family housing starts declined 8.6 percent over the year.

Mortgage rates saw increases across the board after nearly two months in record-low territory, with Freddie Mac revealing in a weekly survey Thursday that the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage ticked up to 3.71 percent. The GSE found that the 30-year loan's increase ended a six-week streak of falling rates. At the same time last year, the fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.50 percent. The 15-year FRM also slid up, averaging 2.98 percent (0.7 point). The average was 2.94 percent last week, according to Freddie Mac.