Headlines

A new report released Tuesday by the Wells Fargo Economics Group noted that consumer sentiment in Florida remained at 78 for the second straight month. Although consumers in the nation as a whole lost some confidence in February, the Florida Consumer Sentiment Index showed citizens of the Sunshine State remained steady.

"Looser financial institution credit standards on residential and commercial policies could lead to an increase in title insurance claims if the insurers fail to maintain rigorous underwriting procedures," Fitch Ratings said in a release put out Monday.

Homes.com has released its December Local Market Index, a price performance summary of repeat sales of U.S. properties. The index notes year-over-year gains for single-family properties in all 300 top U.S markets for the ninth consecutive month. The total markets that are considered "fully recovered" have increased to 89, up from the previous month’s 87.

Freddie Mac released its Monthly Volume Summary for January, 2014, noting their total mortgage portfolio decreased at an annualized rate of 1.9 percent in January. Despite a slight uptick in December, 2013, Freddie Mac’s ending balance has been declining since June, 2013.

Although 2013 was the strongest year for home prices in nearly a decade, is a slowdown on the horizon for 2014? The S&P Dow Jones Indices released Tuesday its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, which had some interesting revelations for the housing market in the future.

Liquid Logics, the developer of the industry’s first cloud-based loan origination system (LOS), announced Monday the company has promoted Peter Kallodaychsak, a 15-year veteran of the mortgage technology industry, to VP of Business Development.

TeleVoice, a provider of customized telephony applications, announced Monday the updated release of its whiter paper on enhancing call center efficiency. The white paper details how customer satisfaction can be improved by utilizing Computer Telephony Integration (CTI)-enabled Screen Pop technology.

A new report by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) says mortgage risk remains unaffected by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s (CFPB) qualified mortgage (QM) guidelines. The group’s National Mortgage Risk Index (NMRI), a measure of loan performance under stressful economic conditions, increased to a reading of 11.8 percent in January from 10.6 percent at the end of 2013.

The Data & Analytics division of Black Knight Financial Services released on Monday its latest Home Price Index (HPI), noting an increase of .1 percent in home prices to $232,000 for the month of December. The figure represents the price of non-distressed sales by taking into account price discounts for real estate owned (REO) and short sales.

Per new regulations finalized last week, the GSEs will be required to file suspicious activity reports (SARs) directly with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) rather than through their own regulator. Developed in coordination with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), FinCEN’s final rule is intended to provide law enforcement and regulators with a more complete picture of mortgage fraud.