Headlines

MCS Valuations (MCSV) has announced the closing of its Sandy, Utah, office and the move of all of its operations to the Mortgage Contracting Services (MCS) headquarters in Plano, Texas, and MCS offices in Tampa, Florida, and Ruston, Louisiana.

May 2015's cash sales share of nearly 32 percent was down by 31 percent from the peak of 46.5 percent recorded in January 2011. CoreLogic estimates that if the cash sales share continues to decline at the same rate as it did in May 2015, the cash sales share should fall back down to its pre-crisis level of 25 percent by the middle of 2017.

The default rates for both first and second mortgages held steady from June to July while the composite index dropped by one basis point after all three increased from May to June, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices and S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Indices for July 2015 released Tuesday.

All 10 of the largest metro areas and 48 states reported double-digit year-over-year declines in the percentage of seriously delinquent mortgages in Q2, according to TransUnion. The metro areas that experienced the largest declines were Miami (40 percent, down to 5.31 percent) and Los Angeles (29.1 percent, down to 2.07 percent).

Boston-based Eastern Bank, a full-service commercial bank recently announced the appointment of Steven L. Antonakes as SVP and chief compliance officer.

As they promised earlier this year, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have intensified their efforts in the last few months to rid their single-family residential mortgage portfolios of deeply delinquent, non-performing loans (NPLs).

The Philadelphia Fed reported that the labor market outlook remains unchanged. The forecasters predicted similar results as the last survey for unemployment, noting that it will be an annual average of 5.3 percent in 2015, before falling to 5.0 percent in 2016, 4.8 percent in 2017, and 4.7 percent in 2018.

According to the New York Fed, foreclosures hit their lowest point in the 16-year history of the bank's Consumer Credit Panel, which uses anonymized Equifax credit data to generate a nationally representative sample.

In her new role as chief economist, she will be the face of Zillow’s housing research as she continues to lead Zillow’s economic research team as it produces monthly reports on housing trends for more than 450 metros nationwide, as well as original research on the country’s most important housing topics.

The new record set in July surpassed the previous mark of $46.1 billion, set in July 2009. For Fiscal Year 2015, Ginnie Mae has guaranteed more than $346 billion mortgage-backed securities, way ahead of the $242 billion the corporation guaranteed by this point in FY 2014.