News

Fannie Mae has released the names of its top loan originators of multifamily debt financing for 2009. Pittsburgh-based PNC Financial Services sat at the top of the list. The GSE works with its lender partners to provide debt solutions for all segments of the multifamily market. The GSE invested $19.8 billion in multifamily housing last year.

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA) announced Friday that it recently issued $5.6 million of tax-exempt bonds on behalf of New Hampshire House Associates, LLC. The proceeds of these bonds will be used to finance the acquisition and rehabilitation of a multifamily residential rental facility in Warren, Ohio. This project is OHFA's first multifamily transaction under the Treasury/government-sponsored enterprise HFA initiative, which was announced October 19, 2009.

Overdue loans in pools of commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS) continue to mount. Although the rate of increase slowed from March's breakneck pace, the research firm Trepp LLC reported Monday that the percentage of CMBS loans 30 or more days delinquent, in foreclosure, or classified as REO jumped 41 basis points last month, putting the overall delinquency rate at 8.02 percent. Fitch Ratings says the default rate for its CMBS-rated universe is even higher, hitting 8.15 percent at the end of Q1 2010.

Valligent, a Roseville, California-based provider of collateral valuation and risk management solutions, and Global DMS, a Lansdale, Pennsylvania-based provider of appraisal process management solutions, recently launched an end-to-end valuation service for ordering, managing, and delivering a full range of valuation products in MISMO-sanctioned XML data format -- all in full compliance with major guidelines and regulations.

Soured loans continue to bring down financial institutions in mass. Seven more community banks were shuttered by regulators over the weekend, bringing the total number of FDIC-insured failures to 64 for the year. The latest round of closures targeted banks in Puerto Rico, Michigan, Missouri, and Washington, and will cost the FDIC more than $7 billion.

The Texas housing market may be on the road to recovery. According to the latest Texas Quarterly Housing Report released Monday by the Texas Association of Realtors, both sales and prices for homes in the Lone Star State increased on a year-over-year basis in the first quarter of this year. Sales volume for existing single-family homes was 42,682 for the first three months of 2010, up 4 percent from the same period in 2009. In addition, the median home price jumped 3.13 percent from $137,200 in the first quarter of last year to $141,500 in the first quarter of this year.

As for commercial real estate, now is the time to invest. But according to a report from the CCIM Institute and the Real Estate Research Corporation, various risks are hindering commercial real estate investors from doing so. Their report says 2010 is ""a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity"" to snag key long-term investments, but market factors such as diminished demand for commercial space due to high unemployment and declining rents are holding some investors back.

PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. released its second quarter 2010 U.S. Market Risk Index Monday, which showed that the likelihood home prices will take another dive is steadily diminishing. The company found that the risk of falling home prices increased in only one of the 384 metros in its study. According to PMI, a combination of factors led to declining risk in most geographic areas, including affordability, a general improvement in mortgage credit quality, decreasing foreclosure rates, and a drop in excess housing supply.

a la mode, inc. recently announced that it has broadened its SureDocs e-Signature system to include market-specific versions for appraisers and real estate agents. The company said the deployment of appraiser and agent versions of SureDocs, shortly after FHA's confirmation that it now accepts electronic signatures on third party documents, is a huge step forward in truly creating paperless loans with all of the documents being ""first generation"" electronic files.

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