News

Fay Servicing, a residential mortgages servicer, announced the addition of Nancy Barthel to its executive team as SVP of operational risk. Her role will be to develop and strengthen the company's QA/QC programs, as well as managing risk across the organization.

In a fortuitous reversal for Ellie Mae, the company announced that a previously reported outage stemming from a presumed cyber-attack was in fact "triggered by a confluence of factors involving network, hardware, software and demand for service."

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported a one-point increase in its monthly Housing Market Index (HMI), a measure of builders’ confidence in the market for newly constructed single-family homes. Registering 47 as of the latest release, the index has now spent three straight months below 50, the threshold between a market viewed largely as “good” and one viewed as “bad.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced an agreement with the city of Dubuque, Iowa, settling allegations that the city discriminated against African Americans. The agreement stemmed from allegations of discrimination in the administration of the city's Housing Choice Voucher Program.

Matt Hunoval, founder of the Charlotte-based Hunoval Law firm, has been appointed by Governor Pat McCrory to serve as a member of North Carolina’s State Banking Commission.

According to the Mortgage Graveyard report by Mortgage Daily, the number of mortgage-related failures has significantly declined this past year, and wholesale lenders are disappearing equally as quickly. However, mortgage mergers are on the rise.

It would appear that the Silver State is slowly making a comeback, according to a new report from the Wells Fargo Economics Group. Nevada, which posted the fastest year-to-year growth of any state, is battling back from the housing slump and severe recession.

Jersey Shore State Bank, a subsidiary of Penns Woods Bancorp, Inc., was recognized by the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency (PHFA) for its 2013 performance. The bank's mortgage services division received a high producer ranking of PHFA loans in Pennsylvania, top lender in PHFA HOMEstead loans, and the top producer of new PHFA construction loans.

A new survey put out by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York found that consumer expectations rose slightly in March, and home price change expectations declined slightly. The bank's findings from the Survey of Consumer Expectations (SCE) found that consumer expectations both rose at the one-year and three-year horizon by 3.2 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.

On Monday, Pro Teck released its March Home Value Forecast, which ranks the hottest and coolest metro markets in the country. California claimed nine of the top 10 slots (Nassau County-Suffolk County, New York, was the other), while Florida claimed seven of the bottom 10 areas for home value appreciation.