Tag Archives: Attorneys & Title Companies

Home prices ticked down on average by 0.8 percent in October, reaching $200,000 and marking the fifth straight month for declines for industry figures, according to Lender Processing Services. In releasing the national home price index, the analytics provider also said that November may have fielded about 0.5 percent in home prices declines. The new numbers for home prices follow ongoing declines from 2006, at which time U.S. housing inventory amounted to $10.6 trillion ├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔé¼┼ô and since fell to $7.5 trillion.

Mortgage lender American Financial Resources, Inc., has added a new national sales director. AFR recently announced the appointment of Paul Impagliazzo to the position, and he will now be responsible for the company's wholesale and correspondent lending divisions.

Mortgage Contracting Services has appointed a new chief information officer, with the announcement that Tod Phelps will join the firm. In his role for the company, Phelps will be responsible for developing new strategies for all information technology initiatives.

Gaining industry approval, SharperLending LLC has announced that Veros Real Estate Solutions confirmed its appraisal firewall platform for integration with the Uniform Collateral Data Portal (UCDP). SharperLending released its appraisal firewall interface to the UCDP on December 10, and Veros has now declared the web-based program operationally ready for submissions.

Mortgage Cadence, LLC, has been selected by Generation Mortgage Company to replace the company's current lending system. Generation will begin using Mortgage Cadence's Orchestrator, Finale Document Services, and Opus systems to gain enhanced end-to-end support for its mortgage lending business.

Vertical Capital Markets Group has announced the debut of the mortgage-based Vertical Capital Income Fund. Targeting the development of a quality portfolio of mortgages for investors, Vertical's newly launched project seeks to capitalize on low-priced loans.

A surge in suits involving mortgage-backed securities propelled litigation cases for mortgage servicers to 218 over the third quarter last year, according to a recent index. Mortgage-backed securities litigation rose by 36 cases over the third quarter, up from 26 seen from the last quarter and just 12 in the third quarter 2010. Foreclosure-related suits also went up from 67 in the second quarter to 90 in the third quarter, followed shortly by litigation from investors, which leapt from 50 to 82 over the same time frame.

Making our mortgage fraud blotter Monday, news outlets reported stories involving a Wisconsin man and his wife who allegedly raked in $10 million and another man from Chicago purportedly responsible for hundreds of thousands in advanced fees he bilked from churches. In one story, the churches handed over thousands in advance fees in exchange for capital for multimillion-dollar loans, while in another a married couple went through sham buyers to siphon $10 million in funds from lenders with bank-owned properties at their disposal.

In international news, HSBC has announced the formation of a company panel devoted to extending legal aid to its mortgage borrowers. The panel, which will be made up of solicitors and licensed conveyancers, will target the provision of required legal services for those purchasing a home mortgage via HSBC.

Stonegate Mortgage Corporation has appointed a new executive to its ranks. The company recently announced that John F. Macke would join Stonegate as its executive vice president of capital markets.