News

The Office of the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) announced that a $7.5 million settlement has been reached with Bank of America’s former CFO, Joe Price, regarding the bank's actions as it sought to merge with Merrill Lynch & Co. in 2008.

Auction.com announced Monday that it had hired a new chief financial officer. Tim Morse, a former CFO at Yahoo!, has been named as the company’s CFO and executive vice president.

In Black Knight Financial Services’ latest Mortgage Monitor Report, the company found that only one in ten Americans are underwater, down from one in three in 2010. Overall, the company's look at March data reflected a shifting landscape.

The National Association of Mortgage Field Services (NAMFS) recently issued a critique of an audit performed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of the Inspector General (FHFAOIG). NAMFS doesn't believe that the report properly assessed the over 15 million inspections done each year in the United States.

Collateral Analytics, a provider of automated valuation solutions and real estate analytics products for the financial services industry, announced recently it has launched the CA Credit Risk Model. The new patent pending product is designed to offer quantitative measures of the risk and cost of potential borrower default in a residential mortgage.

The Wells Fargo Economics Group released a recent report outlining consumer confidence in the Sunshine State. The data from April suggests consumer sentiment slipped in Florida one point to 79 for the month, largely due to increased concerns about current economic conditions.

News of worse-than-expected first-quarter economic growth brought fixed mortgage rates down this week, according to market reports. In its weekly Primary Mortgage Market Survey,Freddie Mac recorded the average 30-year fixed rate at 4.29 percent (0.7 point) for the week ending May 1, down from 4.33 percent. Last year, the 30-year rate was down at 3.35 percent.

According to the latest report from the Labor Department, the rate of unemployment last month fell to 6.3 percent, down nearly half a percentage point after a flat March. At an estimated 9.8 million, the number of unemployed people was down by 733,000. Employers across the country added 288,000 jobs to their payrolls in April, bringing the unemployment rate down to a new post-crash low.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), serving as the conservator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, announced a settlement for $110 million with First Horizon National Corporation. The settlement resolves alleged violations of securities laws in connection with private-label mortgage-backed securities (PLS) purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from 2005-2007.

Freddie Mac announced it has opened up its "full menu" of relief policies for homeowners whose homes were damaged or destroyed by late April storms. Freddie Mac’s disaster relief policies extend to jurisdictions declared by President Obama to be Major Disaster Areas and where Individual Assistance Programs are being made available, which as of May 1 included parts of Arkansas and Mississippi.