Headlines

The share of all-cash sales reached a new high in the first quarter of 2014, even as the total share of institutional investor purchases dropped to near-record lows. All-cash sales made up 42.7 percent of all U.S. residential property sales for Q1, up from 37.8 percent from the previous quarter, according to RealtyTrac’s U.S. Institutional Investor and Cash Sales Report.

The mortgage delinquency rate declined to 3.61 percent at the end of the first quarter of 2014, according to TransUnion's latest mortgage report. Overall, the mortgage delinquency rate has dropped 24 percent in the last year, and has experienced nine consecutive quarters of decline.

Morningstar Credit Ratings today assigned its "MOR RV1" residential vendor ranking to Carrington Property Services (CPS) as a residential single-family rental property manager and as a residential REO asset manager. The forecast for the rankings is Stable.

Capstone Mortgage welcomed Vicky Elleray to the Scottsdale, Arizona-based company. Elleray will serve as the new operations/servicing manager for the company. She will oversee the day-to-day operations for servicing mortgage loans for Capstone.

With concerns about employment easing, Americans are increasingly optimistic about the housing market, reports Fannie Mae in its April National Housing Survey. And, according to the mortgage buyer, this climbing optimism may foreshadow an upswing in housing activity through the summer months.

Almost 150,000 homeowners in the United States were helped by the Homeowner Assistance team at Genworth Mortgage Insurance (MI), the Raleigh, North Carolina-based unit of Genworth Financial.

A top official for the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) is looking at a felony charge for allegedly threatening the agency's former acting director, Edward DeMarco. Richard Hornsby, FHFA's COO, was charged in late April with "[threatening] to kidnap or injure a person," resulting in an order for him to stay away from DeMarco.

According to the Federal Reserve’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey, released Monday, 14.3 percent of bank respondents reported tightening their credit standards on prime residential mortgages “somewhat,” just slightly higher than the 12.9 percent that eased standards somewhat. The vast majority—72.9 percent—said standards “remained basically unchanged.”

In a nationwide analysis of 351 metros, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) found 300 have seen year-over-year economic gains. According to the group's Leading Markets Index (LMI), 59 metros have fully returned or even exceeded their last normal levels of both economic and housing activity.

Mortgage document preparation vendor International Document Services (IDS) announced more than half of all document packages processed by the company in 2013 were signed electronically.