Tag Archives: CoreLogic

Housing has become an industry afraid of its shadows. That shadow inventory of repossessed and soon-to-be repossessed homes has professionals from every side of the business worried about the impact such a sizeable volume of distress will have on property values and overall market fundamentals. But according to Standard & Poor's, the obscurity hiding in the corner is getting smaller. The agency's current estimate of time-to-clear the market's distress is 47 months. That represents a five-month decline from its first-quarter estimate.

CoreLogic announced the availability of RiskModel Version 4.4 this week. The new technology offering is an analytics application that forecasts future mortgage prepayments, defaults, losses, and cash flows at both the loan and portfolio level. This latest version integrates the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI) with new transition and loss-given-default models for Alt-A first and second-lien mortgages, allowing more than 75 percent of the loans in the development dataset to be estimated at the ZIP code level.

CoreLogic has announced the appointment of Frank D. Martell as its new chief financial officer, effective August 29, 2011. Martell joins CoreLogic with more than 25 years of experience that included public company CFO, COO, and general management positions in the marketing and business information industries. He will oversee global accounting, financial planning and analysis, tax, treasury, real estate, procurement, and administration for CoreLogic.

Despite a declining share of REO and short sales, and a seasonal increase in non-distressed sales, CoreLogic says home prices in June came in 6.8 percent below June 2010. Even with fewer distressed properties changing hands, short sale and REO transactions are weighing heavy on the overall market numbers. CoreLogic's data show that when distressed sales are excluded from the equation, the year-over-year price decline narrows to 1.1 percent. On a monthly basis, CoreLogic reports that home prices edged up 0.7 percent from May to June.

CoreLogic has entered into a definitive agreement to sell its India-based operations, CoreLogic Global Services Private Ltd., to Cognizant. Cognizant is an information technology, consulting, and outsourcing firm headquartered in New Jersey with a large presence in India already. The deal will net CoreLogic approximately $50 million in cash, plus adjustments for working capital. The transaction is expected to close next month.

Median prices for REO and short sale transactions continue to decline. A new report from CoreLogic shows distressed home prices at the national level have fallen 10 percent since 2009. The company notes, however, that new foreclosure auction filings have dropped significantly since last October, and the industry's shadow inventory has been trimmed. With these two distressed sale drivers narrowing, CoreLogic says such transactions will likely begin to decline late in 2011 and into 2012.

Home prices in the U.S. rose in May, marking the second straight month of gains, according to CoreLogic. The company says national home prices, including distressed sales, increased 0.8 percent. CoreLogic asserts that the spring buying season has brought with it more demand for non-distressed properties, which has contributed to the short-term gains in prices. Some are holding out hope that the consistent upticks are evidence the five-year long decline in prices may be drawing to a close.

The debate over what constitutes a Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) is heating up, with a pivotal argument centered around whether or not the proposed QRM stipulations will actually lower the risk of default. In one corner you have the handful of regulators charged with putting the definition of QRM into the rule book, and in the other corner you have just about everybody else, with consumer advocates joining mortgage bankers in a rare showing, and congressional lawmakers standing firmly alongside them.

CoreLogic has announced the introduction of Verification of Military Status (VOMS), a compliance and loan portfolio due diligence solution. VOMS allows mortgage servicers to identify borrowers protected under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), which bans foreclosures and caps interest rate increases for those on active duty and up to 90 days following discharge.

The shadow inventory of repossessed and soon-to-be repossessed homes not yet visible to the market has been trimmed, according to CoreLogic. The company reports that as of April 2011, the industry's shadow supply fell to 1.7 million units, down from 1.9 million a year earlier. CoreLogic attributes the decline to fewer new delinquencies and a high level of distressed sales, which has helped to reduce the deluge of foreclosure properties on a market already beset by a supply and demand imbalance.