The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) started off its 100th Annual Convention Sunday with the election and swearing-in of its board of directors for the 2014 membership year.

According to RE/MAX's National Housing Report for September, closed transactions fell 18.5 percent month-over-month, in line with the typical trend as summer passes into autumn. Year-over-year, however sales increased 10.7 percent, making September the 27th consecutive month in which sales rose on an annual basis. The company also reported a slowdown in the rate of inventory decline.

JPMorgan Chase reached agreements to resolve its mortgage-backed securities litigation with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and rep and warranty repurchase claims from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Altogether, the bank has agreed to pay $5.1 billion to the GSEs.

ValuTrac Software, a software solutions provider to the appraisal management and mortgage lending industry, announced the hiring of David Yavorsky as the company's new chief information officer (CIO). Yavorsky comes to ValuTrac from a 13-year career at First American, where he held several senior level management positions.

Fay Servicing, a Chicago-based special servicer, announced the launch of an initiative to create strategic partnerships with mortgage lenders and help train originators for careers in servicing. The program is designed to provide training to hone key skills such as managing initial calls with borrowers, meeting compliance requirements, and conducting a Personal Budget Analysis (PBA) for borrowers.

Today's resilient capital market has the capacity to adapt readily to the pending Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage (QM) rules set to take effect January 10, 2014, according to a white paper issued by CoreLogic. The paper titled, ATR/QM Standards: Foundation for a Sound Housing Market, provides an overview of the rules themselves and examines their possible impact on the market.

The recent fast-paced home price appreciation across the country led some markets to the brink of a bubble, but deceleration over the summer months has Zillow analysts breathing a sigh of relief as the bubble threat deflates. Home value appreciation has declined steadily for three months, according to Zillow, and half of the nation's 20 largest metros experienced negative appreciation in September.

Lender Processing Services provided the media with a first look at the company's mortgage performance statistics for the month of September. The industry's foreclosure inventory continued its downward trend, and while delinquencies were up slightly from the previous month, they were down when comparing the numbers year-over-year. All-in-all, there are 4,594,000 mortgages going unpaid in the United States.

Axios Valuation Solutions, a Fort Worth-based compliant appraisal services provider, announced the release of Desktop Appraisal, a new solution designed to combine the company’s technology and analytics with the expertise of local market appraisers to deliver compliant, reliable valuations.

Mortgage rates are inching higher and higher, but the market does not seem to be paying any heed as it continues to show signs of improvement, according to the HousingPulse Tracking Survey released this week. It indicates the emerging slowdown in home purchases appears to be largely seasonal with a number of key indicators--distressed sales, time on market, and purchase offers--still in positive territory.