Tag Archives: Attorneys & Title Companies

In a testimony last week, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke held his ground on the Fed's open-ended purchases program.

The Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR) reported Wednesday that sales were up 25.3 percent year-over-year throughout the state. According to the association, statewide home sales (including single-family homes and condos) totaled 12,621 in April, the best performance for that month since 2007.

The number of homeowners underwater on their mortgages continued to fall in Q1, but millions still lack enough equity to afford to move, Zillow revealed in its first-quarter Negative Equity Report. According to the report, the national negative equity rate was 25.4 percent in the last quarter compared to 27.5 percent at the end of 2012. However, when including homeowners with less than 20 percent home equity, the "effective" negative equity rate is 43.6 percent, or 22.3 million homeowners.

Fixed mortgage rates trended higher for the third consecutive week, according to reports from Freddie Mac and Bankrate.com.

The price of a new single-family home soared to a record high in April as sales jumped 2.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 454,000, the Census Bureau and HUD reported Thursday. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg expected April sales to increase to 425,000 from March's originally reported 417,000. March sales were revised to 444,000. The median price of a new home, according to the Census/HUD report, soared $20,900 (8.3 percent) in April to $271,600, the highest price on record.

Pacific Union Financial, LLC appointed industry veteran Scott Conradson as EVP of mortgage servicing. With over 28 years of servicing and default management experience, Conradson will manage the company's growing servicing portfolio.

Though residential construction "is keeping the economy on an expansionary path," Moody's Analytics suggests that homebuilders are having a tough time shouldering the burden of growth on their own.

Wingspan Portfolio Advisors, a diversified component and special mortgage servicer based in the Dallas area, cut the ribbon on its new Florida-based operation Wednesday.

The stage is set for the private residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) market to make a comeback this year, Barclays says in a new research report.

According to the Redfin's Fastest Real Estate Markets Report, the number of homes under contract within two weeks of debut increased 3 percent month-over-month and 39 percent year-over-year in April.