Bloomington, Illinois-based Mortgage Services III, LLC, (MSI) has expanded its home loan division into the greater Milwaukee area through its acquisition of Complete Mortgage, Inc., of Sussex, Wisconsin, the company announced Tuesday. MSI said its newly acquired team will be located in Waukesha, Wisconsin and will focus on home purchases as well as refinancing current mortgages using conventional, Federal Housing Administration, U.. Department of Veterans Affairs, and U.S. Department of Agriculture programs.

April marked yet another month of improvement for the residential real estate market in Massachusetts. According to a recent report released by the Warren Group, a provider of real estate data in New England, the Bay State saw year-over-year increases in both sales and prices of single-family homes and condos in April.

April proved to be a month of continued stabilization for the Illinois housing market, as both home sales and prices jumped on a year-over-year basis, the Illinois Association of Realtors (IAR) recently reported. According to IAR, statewide total home sales totaled 10,323 transactions in April 2010, jumping 34.4 percent from April 2009. In addition, the association said the median home price in April was $157,450, up 5 percent from the same month last year.

The spin-off transaction of First American's information solutions group and financial services group is officially complete. On Tuesday, First American Financial Corporation, a provider of title insurance and settlement services for residential and commercial real estate transactions, and CoreLogic, Inc., a provider of consumer, financial, and property information and business services, jointly announced their formal separation into two independent publicly traded companies.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced Tuesday that it has sent a proposed rule to the Federal Register implementing provisions of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which establish a duty for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to serve very low-, low-, and moderate-income families in three specified underserved markets -- manufactured housing, affordable housing preservations, and rural markets.

Newark, New Jersey-based Prudential Mortgage Capital Company, the commercial mortgage lending business of Prudential Financial, Inc., recently appointed John DeWitt and Marty Fayer as managing directors and joint leaders of the company's Freddie Mac Program Plus platform. Together, DeWitt and Fayer will be responsible for managing all aspects of the platform, including originating new loans. Additionally, they will arrange multifamily loans on behalf of Prudential's other capital sources.

April marked yet another month of increased sales activity in Florida's residential real estate market. According to the latest housing data released by Florida Realtors, existing home sales surged 27 percent in April from the same month last year, and during the same period, existing condo sales soared 55 percent. Homebuying conditions in the Sunshine State remain favorable, with a variety of housing options available in local markets at attractive prices.

The commercial real estate market continues to be plagued with rising vacancy rates. But according to a recent report by the National Association of Realtors, vacancies should level out in most markets by the end of this year or early 2011. The Society of Industrial and Office Realtors (SIOR), in its SIOR Commercial Real Estate Index, an attitudinal survey of nearly 700 local market experts, confirmed that significant fallout from the recession remains, but to a lesser extent.

Although purchase applications declined further, total mortgage loan application volume jumped 11.3 percent for the week ending May 21, 2010, due to a continued increase in refinance applications, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday. According to MBA's Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey, the purchase index fell 3.3 percent from one week earlier, but during the same period, the refinance index surged 17 percent.

Freddie Mac recently announced the appointment of Mike McRoberts, an 18-year veteran of the company, as VP of multifamily production and sales. In his new position, McRoberts is responsible for the origination and purchase of conventional multifamily loans nationwide, the Program Plus Seller/Servicer network, and the four multifamily regional sales offices.