Tag Archives: Agents & Brokers

Concerned by the risk that new regulatory infrastructure may duplicate existing financial rules, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to the Treasury Department and Federal Trade Commission on Monday outlining recommendations to minimize overlap between the former and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Addressing Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz, the letter called for a Memorandum of Understanding in order to clarify and empower the FTC and CFPB.

On Tuesday the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported a slight 0.8 percent rise in home prices from March to April, representing a positive note in a brittle housing market.

On Monday, leading mortgage servicer Stonegate Mortgage Corp. announced that it hired Matthew Locke to head up its retail lending services division as SVP. Stonegate has grown year over year the past three years, for one reason: its ability to identify opportunities and hire the right people to deliver, Dan Bettenburg, Stonegate├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós president and CEO, said in a statement.

Despite gridlock in the confirmation process for its embattled nominee, news reports put the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on schedule to launch formal operations and ready to begin policing Wall Street in July, with or without the director that Senate Republicans vow to obstruct. With its management team and staff already in place, a broad array of powers sanctioned by the Dodd-Frank Act will empower the consumer protection bureau to issue new rules for over 100 banks with more than $10 billion in assets.

Firing another salvo at the new Dodd-Frank regulatory regime, House Republicans submitted an appropriations bill last week that proposes slashing $350 million from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's budget for 2012. Released by the House Committee on Appropriations, the bill offers to cap funding for the CFPB at $200 million, keeping to a minimum the sweeping powers that Dodd-Frank invested in the new regulatory agency. Provisions also threatened to kneecap the Obama administration's 2011 fiscal year budget.

Tech leaders a la mode and CoreLogic are teaming up. CoreLogic├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós ValuEdge platform will now connect with a la mode├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós Mercury Network to facilitate ValuEdge's Native XML appraisal data. CoreLogic's ValuEdge software targets streamlined appraisal process compliance, and the integrated plugin with a la mode will provide CoreLogic with additional quality control elements and advanced bundling for all reports.

Recent analysis by the Mortgage Bankers Association revealed that commercial and multifamily mortgage debt remained relatively fixed in the first quarter of 2011, down by only 0.1 percent from the fourth quarter.

May housing numbers are in for the state of California and numbers look grim. The survey, conducted by the California Assoc. of Realtors, credits the struggling economy and stringent lending standards for the decline.

RE/MAX issued a report this week that yields a net gain in month-over-month statistics for home sales and prices in May, aligning with an expected seasonal drive by homebuyers, investors, and foreign buyers to real estate. Adding to a three-month trend on the upside, the company says home prices climbed 3.7 percent between April and May, while closed sales transactions rose 3.2 percent. RE/MAX says activity appears to be coming back in line with the seasonal trends expected this time of year.

The real estate information marketplace Zillow has expanded its database of homes, leveraging user-submitted data to add more than 25 million new home valuations generated from the company's proprietary Zestimate algorithms, which are Zillow's own market value estimates based on various details available about individual properties. The company says it now has data, Zestimates, and Rent Zestimates on more than three-quarters of all homes in the United States.