News

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is taking direct aim at mortgage fraud. In a nationwide crackdown, the agency says it will be making hundreds of arrests over the next few weeks, according to a recent report by the Financial Times, which cited people familiar with the matter.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have selected Veros Real Estate Solutions as the technology provider for the Uniform Collateral Data Portal (UCDP), which will support electronic appraisal data delivery to the GSEs. Veros will be responsible for building, maintaining, and supporting the UCDP system, and the company will manage all lender connectivity to the portal.

CoreLogic, a Santa Ana, California-based provider of information, analytics, and business services, announced Monday that it has officially launched Partner InfoNet, a new program for sharing revenue with multiple listing service (MLS) organizations. Through this innovative program, an MLS licenses its listing data for use in a variety of new risk management products for mortgage lenders, servicers, and capital markets, the company explained.

Williams Title Guaranty and Escrow Agency, Ltd., a Colorado-based firm offering sale and mortgage services for both residential and commercial real estate, recently announced that the company has expanded is geographic reach to include all 50 states in the United States. Prior to June 1, Williams Title offered title and escrow services in Colorado and Florida only.

In an effort to improve the system of maintaining and selling its inventory of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) foreclosed homes, HUD has awarded 55 new contracts - 23 to companies who will serve as asset managers and 32 companies who will serve as field service managers - under the third generation of its management and marketing program, known as M&M III. Currently, HUD's foreclosure inventory amounts to approximately 44,000 homes. The agency says the M&M III program is expected to create 1,200 new jobs nationwide.

Public optimism that a sustainable economic recovery is underway has driven up home prices in many regional markets, according to Fiserv, Inc. The financial services firm released its analysis of home price trends Monday, which showed that by the end of last year, prices were trending up in 40 percent of the 384 metros studied. Fiserv says areas where investors are buying up foreclosures and where the employment outlook is improving are seeing the greatest gains.

As the housing market continues to face significant challenges, the strength of job growth has become a key to a broader and sustained recovery, according to the State of the Nation's Housing 2010 report released Monday by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. ""If history is a guide, what happens with jobs will matter the most to the strength of the housing rebound,"" said Eric S. Belsky, executive director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) wants to tack three extra months onto the closing deadline of the homebuyer tax credit. He has introduced an amendment to a jobs and tax bill that would extend the tax credit deadline for closing on a home purchase to September 30. The current deadline is June 30, but there is growing concern that the sheer volume of applications in the pipeline has made it impossible for lenders to close all qualifying transactions by the end of June.

Breaking from the typical mass shutdowns that have characterized nearly every Friday evening for the past year and a half, regulators this weekend closed down only one financial institution - Washington First International Bank in Seattle. The closing brings the number of FDIC-insured bank failures for the year to 82. That's more than double the year-to-date seizures at this time in 2009.

JPMorgan Chase sold a $716.3 million bond backed by commercial mortgages Friday. It's the largest multi-borrower conduit deal of its kind since secondary markets froze up more than two years ago, and only the second commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) offering of 2010. The bond is backed by 36 fixed-rate commercial mortgages secured by 96 properties, primarily retail stores. Nearly a third of the properties are located in California and Texas.