Foreclosures | Mortgages | Financing
Prospective home loan borrowers got a break on rates this past week. Odds are rates will stay down or dip a little further in the next report.
In Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey for the week that ended on March 23, thirty-year fixed rates averaged 4.23 percent.
That was 7 basis points lower than in the previous survey. But the 30 year still stands well above 3.71 percent as of the same week last year.
From:: Financing
Another settlement reached with a credit bureau marks the third such action in as many months and the third of the big three credit repositories to settle.
In late December, TransUnion revealed in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing a $19.4 million settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Then, just a few days later in January, the CFPB announced that it issued a consent order against Equifax that will cost the company $6.3 million.
From:: Financing
Loan applicants who don’t have a traditional credit scores will soon be able to obtain automated approvals using nontraditional credit.
Up to this point, primary lenders had to manually underwrite Freddie Mac residential loans for borrowers who don’t have credit scores.
But that is about to change, according to an announcement on Thursday from the McLean, Virginia-based secondary mortgage lender.
From:: Financing
The results have arrived for the ranking of the country’s 10 largest originators of commercial real estate loans during all of last year.
Wells Fargo & Co. originated 6,928 commercial mortgages during 2016 that had an aggregate principal balance of $65.394 billion.
The level of activity at the San Francisco-based company landed it in the No. 1 position among the nation’s largest CRE loan originators.
From:: Financing
Following the successful implementation of the first phase of a common mortgage-backed security, the government-sponsored enterprises are moving on to phase 2.
Back in December, McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac implemented the common securitization platform on some of its single-family fixed-rate MBS.
The move, which was dubbed Release 1, paved the way for the implementation of a combined to-be-announced MBS for Freddie and cousin Fannie Mae.
From:: Financing
As new home sales picked up last month, the inventory of new houses for sale increased to the highest level in more than seven years.
The number of privately owned new single-family residential properties that were sold during February 2017 came to 49,000 units.
Volume jumped from 41,000 the prior month to the highest volume since July 2016, when there were downwardly revised 54,000 sales.
From:: Financing
For the third month in a row, the share of mortgages that were past due at least one month or in the foreclosure process has moved lower.
There were 2.605 million residential loans that were at least 30 days delinquent or in the foreclosure inventory as of the end of February.
The non-current loan count declined from 2.643 million a month earlier. An even bigger improvement was made from 2.907 million a year earlier.
From:: Financing
During the past week, there have been boardroom changes at a mortgage servicer and government-sponsored enterprise. One firm appointed an interim chief financial officer.
A March 17 statement from the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. indicated that Raphael W. Bostic has notified the company he will resign from the board of directors.
McLean, Virginia-based Freddie Mac noted that Bostic is leaving on May 31 to take over as president and chief executive officer of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
From:: Financing
A pair of recent reports reveal how prospective financial services customers are using social media and how financial institutions are capitalizing on the trend.
Budgets for social media will increase this year at two-thirds of the nation’s banks, according to a recent survey of depository financial institutions.
Plans to increase spending on social media resources during 2017 reflect the significance of the medium, with three-quarters of bankers calling it important.
From:: Financing
With supply shortages being blamed, the annual rate of existing home sales declined last month. The Northeast was out front of the drop.
Homebuyers completed the purchase of 315,000 existing single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-operatives in February.
The sale of pre-owned residential properties slipped from the previous month, when a downwardly revised 319,000 home sales closed.
From:: Financing