Tag Archives: Investors

Zillow expects conditions next year to be a bit friendlier to homebuyers--but that doesn't mean we'll necessarily see more owner-occupied housing, experts at the real estate marketplace say. Looking at ongoing trends, Zillow made four major predictions about the course of housing over 2014: a 3 percent increase in home values, a rise in mortgage rates to 5 percent, a clearer road to credit for borrowers, and a decline in homeownership to normal levels.

Joseph A. Smith, the monitor overseeing servicers' compliance with last year's National Mortgage Settlement, filed reports on how the institutions involved with the settlement are dealing with the agreement. "My testing confirmed six fails in the first quarter of 2013 and one in the second quarter of 2013," Smith said in a statement issued Wednesday, adding that the "banks are all taking action to address the failures through detailed corrective action plans."

CoreLogic and the Urban Institute have formed a strategic alliance to power further economic and social policy research, the two groups announced. Through the alliance, CoreLogic's data will be used to power the research conducted by the Urban Institute's newly formed Housing Finance Policy Center.

In Georgia, Equity Loans LLC made two announcements: the launch of its correspondent lending channel and the hiring of two new executives to support the division.

Long-term mortgage rates saw a jump this week following better-than-expected economic reports. Freddie Mac released Thursday the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey, putting the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) at a rate of 4.46 percent (0.5 point) for the week ending December 5, up from 4.29 percent last week. Frank Nothaft, VP and chief economist for Freddie Mac, pinned the increases on encouraging growth in private jobs and new home sales.

Third-quarter gross domestic product (GDP) advanced ahead of initial estimates, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Thursday. For the second of its three quarterly GDP reports, BEA put economic growth at 3.6 percent in the third quarter, well ahead of the 2.8 percent growth projected in the preliminary report released early November. According to BEA, the revision reflects an increase in private inventory investment, which was far greater than previously estimated.

Modest to moderate economic growth continues to be the theme at the Federal Reserve, which released on Wednesday its Beige Book tracking expansion across its 12 districts from October through mid-November. The Fed reported improvements in residential real estate activity in Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, St. Louis, Minneapolis, and San Francisco, with slower single-family home sales softening real estate in most of the remaining districts.

Carrington Mortgage Services' lending division appointed Carl Grimes as branch manager of its office in Tampa, Florida.

Sales of new single-family homes were at an estimated seasonally adjusted annual pace of 354,000 in September, Census and HUD reported. In October, the sales pace picked up to an estimated 444,000, an increase of 25.4 percent month-over-month and 21.6 percent year-over-year. As of month's end, the seasonally adjusted estimate of new houses for sale for 183,000, representing a 4.9 month supply at the current sales rate, the agencies reported.

ProLender Solutions, Inc., a provider of paperless mortgage lending software, announced it has added flood, fraud, and Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System (NMLS) services to its existing interface with QuestSoft's Compliance EAGLE platform.