Tag Archives: Attorneys & Title Companies

360 Mortgage Group, a privately owned mortgage banker operating out of Austin, Texas, announced Ron Summers has joined the team as its newest account executive. Summers, who has more than 12 years of mortgage lending and real estate experience, will report to Al Crisanty, VP of national wholesale production, as he works to expand relationships with high-quality mortgage brokers throughout Northern California.

The appraiser community is starting to show confidence in today's housing climate, United States Appraisals revealed in a release.

Following a "robust" holiday shopping season, consumer spending slowed to a more cautious pace in this year's first quarter, according to new data from the Chase Freedom Lifestyle Index. The index shows overall spending was down 9 percent from the last quarter of 2012, falling to a level about even with last year's first quarter. As winter gave way to spring, March saw consumers shift their spending focus to home improvement projects (up 25 percent from February) and clothing/apparel (up 28 percent).

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) director Richard Cordray faced a contentious Senate Banking Committee Tuesday for his semi-annual report to Congress. A particular point of debate was the joint effort between CFPB and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) to establish a national mortgage database that includes information such as borrower profiles, payment history, and mortgage products and terms on loans--an idea one senator described as "creepy."

In Greenwood Village, Colorado, Blueberry Systems, LLC announced the promotion of industry veteran Dominick Marchetti to COO.

Clarifire, a Florida-based leader in workflow automation technology announced the launch of its next-generation website, eClarifire.com.

Attorneys for Standard & Poor's (S&P) filed Monday a motion to dismiss a civil lawsuit from the federal government accusing the ratings agency of inflating ratings and misrepresenting the creditworthiness of certain securities. In their filing, S&P's attorneys argue that the government cannot prove S&P knowingly issued rating opinions it did not believe, dismissing exchanges between employees offered by the plaintiffs as proof of intent to defraud investors.

While other states spent March gearing up for a busy spring season, Massachusetts saw a decline in sales throughout the month, the Boston-based Warren Group reported.

An estimated 37,764 new and resale houses and condos sold statewide in California in March--a monthly increase of 31.5 percent, according to information released by San Diego-based DataQuick. March's sales numbers also came in 0.8 percent above March 2012's 37,481, DataQuick reported.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released Tuesday its House Price Index (HPI) for February, revealing home prices rose 0.7 percent month-over-month on a seasonally adjusted basis. Year-over-year, U.S. house prices were up 7.1 percent. As of February, the U.S. index rested at 196.3, 13.6 percent below its peak in April 2007 and was roughly the same as its October 2004 reading. FHFA's index has not declined on a monthly basis since January 2012.