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The Mortgage Bankers Association and six other industry groups sent a letter to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke Monday, voicing their concern that the Fed, which has jurisdiction over the Truth in Lending Act (TILA), and HUD, which oversees the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA), will create regulatory rules that overlap. The Dodd-Frank Act created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will be overseen by yet another agency, the Treasury, and will have regulatory authority over consumer disclosures.

At the 2010 Realtors Conference, real estate professionals were cautiously optimistic about the current and future state of the industry. Most agreed that the rise in home sales and prices during the boom was both unrealistic and unsustainable. Today, the industry has returned to a more sound and balanced idea of homeownership. But current conditions mandate agents educate themselves about buying and selling distressed properties and working with investor buyers, particularly when it comes to handling short sales.

Home prices continue to plunge across much of the U.S., according to Clear Capital, but the company says it's seeing trends at the micro-market level which give credence to the old adage that real estate is local. Clear Capital's home price report released Tuesday shows that residential values at the national level are down 5 percent for the three months ending in October. Several markets in the East are bucking the national trend and posting gains, but Clear Capital also names six markets that have already entered double dip territory.

The Federal Reserve says both large and small banks are beginning to ease back on their credit requirements for ""some categories of loans"" to households and businesses. However, standards continue to tighten on prime mortgages and home-equity loans, particularly at smaller institutions. According to the Federal Reserve's study, consumer demand for residential mortgages decreased during the three months ending in October compared to earlier survey periods, with the falloff again most evident at smaller banks.

The nation's largest mortgage financier reported a smaller loss during the third quarter than it did in the second, with the latest figures representing a $17 billion improvement over financial results from a year earlier. Fannie Mae says, though, that it needs another $2.5 billion from taxpayers to cover its net worth deficit. The GSE also reported that home retention actions were down 14 percent in Q3, while home repossessions rose by nearly 24 percent. As of September 30, Fannie Mae's inventory of single-family REO properties stood at 166,787.

Advantage Title Company recently announced the release of its proprietary REO monitoring system, TitleFlow, which addresses the requirements of foreclosed transactions. The system enables Advantage Title to monitor client-specific requirements and production workflow. Turn times of multiple tasks can be closely tracked, with time-sensitive color coding that enables Advantage Title's team to determine at a glance the status of various jobs for each property in the client's pipeline.

Industry data released Monday shows that the biggest originator of home loans is based on the West Coast, while the biggest mortgage servicer is based on the East Coast. With more than $100 billion in new home loans, Wells Fargo held onto the top spot among mortgage originators during the third quarter of this year. Bank of America took the lead spot in the mortgage servicer rankings, with just over $2 trillion in residential home loans in its servicing portfolio as of September 30th.

Data-Vision, Inc. recently partnered with Sollen Technologies to integrate their respective technologies. Data-Vision provides Internet lending technologies that enable mortgage lenders to implement Web portal and e-lending capabilities. Sollen Technologies is an Internet-based application services provider of product, pricing, and best execution capabilities for the mortgage industry.

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) insured 1.74 million single-family mortgages during fiscal year 2010, which for the agency ended in September. The collective value of the loans endorsed was $318.8 billion. FHA's loan volume for the year was down 10.3 percent from 2009, and came in below the 1.87 million mortgages it had previously projected would be endorsed in the 2010 fiscal year. The agency's serious delinquency rate stood at 8.4 percent at year-end. At the same time in 2009, the rate was 8.3 percent.

The turbulent financial crisis sparked overwhelming support by Americans for Congress to enact financial legislation to prevent future bailouts. But according to the findings of an academia study, the landmark Dodd-Frank Act failed to meet consumer expectations. Only 12 percent of survey respondents declared they were satisfied with the reform bill, while 54 percent of Americans were dissatisfied. Sentiment about real estate pricing and strategic defaults were also examined in the quarterly study.