Servicing

Caliber Funding LLC, a leading national residential mortgage lender headquartered in Dallas, Texas, announced the appointment of Tammy Richards as its SVP of operations. Richards has more than three decades of leadership experience in mortgage banking and extensive expertise in process improvement, quality management, technology, and leadership development.

The President has tried repeatedly to describe the impact of sequestration, a mandatory across-the-board cut in federal spending exempting only a small handful of social safety net programs. Despite those exemptions, a simple fact is that people will die as a result of these cuts, and lives could be changed irrevocably. The tragedy in this is not what might happen, although that's pretty severe long-term. The tragedy is both Democrats and Republicans have the means to fix it without having to resort to face-saving techniques.

Signs of expanding employment lifted the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment, according to a release issued Friday.

The Warren Group ranked Norcom Mortgage, a privately-owned mortgage lender, No. 1 for purchase lending in its recent Residential Mortgage MarketShare Report.

Guardian Real Estate Services LLC, a Portland, Oregon-based real estate management, investment, and development firm, announced last week a new commitment to social equity and diversity. Guardian's newly-announced commitment includes intentions to continue to promote diversity within the company.

Veros Real Estate Solutions, a collateral valuation technology firm based in Santa Ana, California, announced that its innovative valuation management platform, Sapphire, is now in use at Citizen's Equity First Credit Union (CEFCU).

Personal income dropped $505.5 billion, or 3.6 percent, and disposable personal income (DPI) fell $491.4 billion, or 4.0 percent, in January, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Friday. The income drop was steeper than the 2.1 percent decline economists had expected.

Following a vote in the Senate, Jack Lew is officially the Secretary of the Treasury. The Senate voted Wednesday 71-26 to confirm Lew, who was previously President Obama's chief of staff. Lew replaces Tim Geithner, who stepped down at the end of January; deputy secretary Neal Wolin had been filling in in the meantime.

HUD unveiled on Thursday an app for iPhone and iPad devices designed to provide the public and the housing industry with a quick and easy way to learn about the Fair Housing Act and to file discrimination complaints.

Real gross domestic product (GDP) grew 0.1 percent in the fourth quarter, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Thursday. Last month, in the advance GDP release, BEA had reported the nation's economy contracted by 0.1 percent, the first "negative growth" since the end of the Great Recession in mid-2009. Economists had expected the turnaround, but to a stronger 0.5 percent growth rate. BEA said the revision is based on more complete data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month.