News

The Terranova Group has launched a program to purchase troubled assets from the portfolios of community banks while raising capital to support the banks' stability and recovery. After conducting an analysis of a bank's REO portfolio and nonperforming assets, Terranova will advise and execute a disposition strategy in which the troubled assets are acquired from the bank's portfolio.

Federal regulatory agencies issued guidelines Thursday on sound practices by financial institutions for real estate appraisals and evaluations. The guidelines explain the agencies' minimum standards for appraisals and incorporate the agencies' recent supervisory issuances on appraisal practices. The 70-page document will replace the former guidelines which were written in 1994, and officials say it will ensure consistency in the application and enforcement of appraisal regulations.

They've been sitting at half-century lows for months now, but that trend appears to have snapped as mortgage interest rates across the board rose again this week. One industry report points out that long-term rates have been heading upward for three weeks straight; another says they've now hit a four-month high. Freddie Mac puts the average 30-year rate at 4.46 percent and the 15-year rate at 3.81 percent. Bankrate says the larger jumbo 30-year fixed rate jumped as well, settling at 5.29 percent.

In a report released Wednesday by the Mortgage Bankers Association, delinquency rates for commercial and multifamily investor groups were very mixed in the third quarter. The trade group's study assessed loans held in commercial mortgage backed securities (CMBS) as well as performance among other investor groups, such as life insurance companies, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and commercial banks and thrifts. CMBS investors are faring the worst, with delinquency rates the highest they've been since 1997.

CoreLogic Credco recently introduced FinalCheck, an automated, fully ""decisionable"" suite of prefunding risk evaluation products that instantly verify credit, application, and fraud data in an easy-to-read report for lenders. The company says FinalCheck is designed to help lenders satisfy GSE requirements, reduce repurchase risk, and increase loan delivery confidence.

Industry data released Thursday showed that the number of contracts signed for home purchases climbed in October. The news came as a surprise to analysts and industry professionals who have been anticipating a continued falloff in buyer demand due to the typical seasonal slowdown in home sales, compounded by concerns that servicers' affidavit problems could muddy some transactions. The National Association of Realtors says its gauge of pending sales for previously owned homes rose 10.4 percent.

New data released by RealtyTrac Thursday shows that distressed homes - including those in default, scheduled for foreclosure auction, and REO - accounted for 25 percent of all U.S. residential sales during the third quarter. These properties sold at an average of 32 percent below the price of their non-distressed counterparts. The company tracked 113,933 REO sales during the July to September period and 74,815 pre-foreclosure, typically short sale, transactions.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported Wednesday that mortgage applications for refinancing dropped 21.6 percent for the week ending November 26, as interest rates continued to head upward. It marked the third weekly decrease for the refinance index, which has hit its lowest level since June 2010. MBA's measurement of loan applications for home purchases rose 1.1 percent from one week earlier and, in contrast, is at its highest level since the beginning of May 2010.

In early November, co-chairs of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform released a draft of a proposal that suggested significantly reducing mortgage interest tax deductions. The final proposal was released Wednesday amid much controversy. The details of the draft have been circulating for weeks, and while the proposal has received some support, there has been strong opposition to such drastic measures in such uncertain and unstable times for the housing market.

According to a new consumer lifestyle survey from Relocation.com, more Americans prefer smaller homes in the suburbs. Forty-eight percent of the respondents to the nationwide survey stated that their ideal home size ranges from 1,000 to 1,999 square feet, a significant contrast to a National Association of Home Builders' report five years ago that found the average home's square footage was 2,400 feet. The survey also found that 54 percent of Americans prefer living in a suburban neighborhood.