News

Mortgage giant Freddie Mae is finding itself on the downward side of the delinquency arrow - and when it comes to delinquencies, the downside is an angle the GSE didn't see for a long three-year stretch. According to Freddie's monthly summary report released Tuesday, the company's single-family delinquency rate fell to 4.06 percent in April, down 7 basis points from March. It was the second straight month that the GSE has reported a decline in delinquencies.

HOPE LoanPort's roster of participants seems to be ever-growing. Consumer Credit Counseling Services of Delaware Valley, with 19 offices in the Philadelphia metro area, is the latest to join the more than 200 counseling agencies and 10 major servicers already committed to the new Web portal.

Global DMS, a Lansdale, Pennsylvania-based provider of appraisal process management solutions, recently released MARS SME, the secondary market edition of its MARS MISMO Appraisal Review System technology. The company said this new sytem offers investors and asset managers a fast and easy way to value entire loan pools, all automatically within just a few minutes.

The nation's thrift industry posted profits of $1.82 billion in the first quarter of 2010. The Office of Thrift Supervision says the data indicates thrifts are stabilizing despite rising delinquencies and foreclosures. By definition, the thrift business involves taking deposits and originating home mortgages. The industry's non-current loans and repossessed real estate assets made up 3.27 percent of total holdings in Q1. Sixty-five percent of these troubled assets were residential mortgages, 27 percent were commercial real estate loans.

Minneapolis-based Wolters Kluwer Financial Services and Columbia, South Carolina-based Avista Solutions have formed a new partnership, under which the companies have integrated Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' Expere Integrated Enterprise (Expere IE) solution with the Avista Agile Loan Origination System. As a result of this integration, Avista Agile users will now have automatic and seamless electronic access to Wolters Kluwer Financial Services' VMP Mortgage Solutions compliance documents and disclosures through Expere IE.

In order to provide mortgage lenders and their investors unprecedented assurances of appraisal quality and value accuracy, Solidifi U.S., a New York-based provider of full fee appraisal services, recently launched the Solidifi CoverageMAX and Solidifi CoveragePLUS insurance programs. Created in conjunction with Companion Specialty Insurance Group and Wells Fargo Special Risks, Inc., these appraisal warranty insurance programs aim to attend to the risk mitigation concerns of mortgage lenders and their investors.

Valligent has announced the introduction of V-Cert, which certifies that Valligent's desk reviews are completed in accordance with secondary market investor and rating agency requirements. The company says this new guarantee provides investors with confidence in the collateral value of the loans they purchase and shifts the collateral due diligence to the prior-to-funding stage.

NeighborWorks America announced Tuesday that it received $1 million from the Rockefeller Foundation in New York to support infrastructure development and technical upgrades for the organization's network of nonprofit housing counselors. NeighborWorks says the grant will help to strengthen and supplement its counseling capacity and increase the efficiency with which its community-based members are able to help homeowners avoid foreclosure.

One of the industry's most-closely watched barometers has quelled recent optimism that residential real estate had found its footing on solid ground. The S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index released Tuesday revealed a 3.2 percent drop in property values during the January to March quarter of 2010, when compared to the level of home prices at the end of 2009. On a year-over-year basis, prices were up 2 percent, but market observers are calling the short-range results ""disappointing"" and a tell-tale sign that the housing market is not out of the woods.

Appraisal technology provider InHouse, Inc. has announced the launch of InHouse Connexions. The company says it's the industry's first technology for managing any combination of disparate appraisal vendors, including appraisal management companies (AMCs) and individual appraisers, from a single platform.