News

Lenders One Mortgage Cooperative recently sponsored the Third Annual Lenders One Legislative Summit in Washington, D.C., to give its mortgage banker members an audience with federal housing agencies and lawmakers.

The Massachusetts Division of Banks issued 87 cease-and-desist orders against licensed mortgage lenders and brokers in the state last week. The regulator cited failure to provide required financial information, including failure to post a bond, as the reason for the closures.

Nationstar Mortgage LLC, headquartered in Dallas, Texas, has joined the list of mortgage companies officially under contract to provide federal loan modifications through the government’s Home Affordable Modification program.

Nearly a quarter of homes currently for sale in the United States have experienced at least one price cut, according to a report released Friday by Trulia, Inc., a San Francisco-based real estate company that tracks home prices in local communities across the country.

Dallas-based MRG Document Technologies (MRG), a provider of mortgage technologies to banks, credit unions, and other lenders, recently announced that Michael O’Leary has joined the company as a senior mortgage consultant.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) says it wants to provide its membership with the best possible information about the U.S. housing market. To help achieve this goal, the NAR research department recently implemented SAS Visual Data Discovery to supply members with updated foreclosure and other housing market information.

Freddie Mac announced on Friday that it is instituting several changes to its refinance offering under the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable program. The McLean, Virginia-based GSE explained that the new relaxed guidelines will make the refinancing option available to a wider scope of borrowers looking for mortgage relief from the government program.

Bank of America Home Loans recently announced a new streamlined program for municipalities to purchase properties from its REO portfolio. The new guidelines are exclusively for local and state government departments receiving HUD’s Neighborhood Stabilization Program (NSP) grants.

Wells Fargo Home Mortgage is hiring 200 new staff members in the San Antonio, Texas, area to keep up with an increase in loan modification and refinance volumes. The _San Antonio Express-News:http://www.

St. Paul, Minnesota’s Securian Financial Group recently unveiled a new debt protection program, Payment Assurance, which cancels or suspends a borrower’s loan payment for up to six months if they lose their income due to involuntary unemployment.