Tag Archives: Attorneys & Title Companies

President Obama nominated Mary Jo White to serve as chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), according to reports. Obama also renominated Richard Cordray as the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's (CFPB) new rules on loan originator compensation will inevitably raise prices for consumers and harm small business, according to the National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB). NAMB president Donald J. Frommeyer noted that the majority of the 10,579 mortgage brokers in the United States have five employees at most, and a large portion of the commission they receive on loans goes to paying overhead to operate their business.

Blueberry Systems, LLC, a Colorado-based mortgage and financial service technology provider, announced two new additions to its executive team.

In New York, Ernst Publishing Company announced that the firm's technology development team has begun leveraging the power and capabilities presented by the communities of Open-Source software.

According to Redfin's latest Real-Time Seller Survey, 81 percent of sellers believe home prices will rise in their area over the next year, up from 75 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012. While the increase in seller confidence should translate to increased inventory, the results have yet to be seen. According to the survey, 49 percent of respondents indicated they were planning to sell, up from 45 percent in last quarter's survey. However, the percentage of respondents who indicated they were selling "right now" fell by nearly half.

The last few weeks have seen a deluge of new rules from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and other regulatory agencies, but a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the reform process is still coming along slowly. As of the end of 2012, GAO estimates regulators have issued rules for approximately 48 percent of the Dodd-Frank provisions that call for them. Most of the effective deadlines for those rules have not yet been reached, the agency says.

New home sales fell 7.3 percent in December to 369,000, the sharpest monthly drop in almost two years, the Census Bureau and Department of Housing and Urban Development reported Friday. The monthly drop in sales was the largest since February 2011. Nonetheless, December 2012 sales were up 8.8 percent over December 2011. Sales for September, October, and November were revised higher, with the November sales pace reported as 398,000, up from the originally reported 377,000.

While some analysts have been speculating over when the economy will return to its "normal" state, Fannie Mae says slow growth is the "new normal."

The top commercial real estate lender in the United States, Wells Fargo & Company, recently announced plans to carry its commercial real estate division overseas to the United Kingdom to fill what the company says is a gap in the U.K. market.

Envoy Mortgage, a Houston, Texas-based retail mortgage originator and servicer, is expanding its operations to include correspondent lending, helping fill a void as many financial institutions exit the space.