According to Realogy Corp., it's time to put real estate professionals who are on the front line every day fighting the housing crisis at the head of the table when it comes to crafting a solution to stimulate the sector's recovery. The firm's CEO Richard A. Smith has sent a formal request to President Obama and his administration calling for a White House summit on housing that brings together industry stakeholders to provide ""unfiltered, real-time market feedback"" for devising policy strategies.

Freddie Mac says it is seeing a ""material increase"" in mortgage insurer rescissions, cancellations, and denials of coverage. The GSE has issued a notice alerting lenders that they may be forced to buy back loans if Freddie Mac determines they do not have the insurance coverage required at delivery, or if the mortgage insurance coverage is no longer in force. Freddie requires a primary mortgage insurance policy as protection against default for loans with a loan-to-value ratio of more than 80 percent.

PMI Group Inc. says its primary subsidiary PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. could be forced to stop issuing new mortgage insurance policies. The company alerted investors of the possibility that its business could come to a halt last week, at the same time it reported a company-wide net loss of $134.8 million for the second quarter. According to a filing with the SEC, PMI Mortgage Insurance's capital holdings have slipped to $320 million below the minimum required by the Arizona Department of Insurance, its primary regulator.

Claims Recovery Financial Services, LLC (CRFS) has hired Lynette Richter as consulting manager. She will be responsible for overseeing all operational aspects of the firm's newly launched consulting and training group. Richter has over 25 years of management, technical, and consulting experience in the mortgage servicing profession. Prior to CRFS, she was director of quality assurance with the consulting firm Lyons McCloskey, LLC.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency shut down First National Bank of Olathe in Kansas on Friday evening and appointed the FDIC as receiver. So far this year, 64 insured institutions have landed on the FDIC's failed bank list. First National Bank of Olathe is the first Kansas-based institution to make that list in 2011. Enterprise Bank & Trust of Clayton Missouri agreed to take over the failed lender.

The law firm of Dyke, Henry, Goldsholl & Winzerling P.L.C. recently announced that partner Rosanna Henry has been elected to the board of the American Legal and Financial Network (ALFN). Henry was elected as ALFN's affiliated attorney trustee board seat, her affiliation being the Legal League 100 consortium of default servicing law firms.

CoreLogic announced the availability of RiskModel Version 4.4 this week. The new technology offering is an analytics application that forecasts future mortgage prepayments, defaults, losses, and cash flows at both the loan and portfolio level. This latest version integrates the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) with new transition and loss-given-default models for Alt-A first and second-lien mortgages, allowing more than 75 percent of the loans in the development dataset to be estimated at the ZIP code level.

Servicers completed 2,213 pre-foreclosure short sales and deeds-in-lieu (DIL) under the government's Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives (HAFA) program during the month of June. Treasury's latest report shows the program is beginning to pick up steam. The number of completed HAFA transactions climbed 55 percent compared to the 1,428 transactions completed in May. That follows a 70 percent jump in finalized HAFA deals between the months of March and April.

Sales of foreclosed REO homes and short sales continue to dominate the Las Vegas market. These distressed sales made up nearly 70 percent of the region's home resales in June, according to the research firm DataQuick. REOs accounted for 58 percent of existing-home sales during the month, while short sales comprised 11 percent. With such a heavy presence of distress, the median home price in the Las Vegas metro area dropped to $115,000 in June - the lowest it's been since October 1995.

Williston Financial Group, LLC (WFG) has named title industry veteran Lynn Riedel president and manager of its Puget Sound division. Riedel will oversee the former Northpoint Escrow & Title operation, acquired by WFG in July 2011. She has over 33 years' experience in the title and escrow industry, most recently having served as a VP with Northpoint.