Tag Archives: CoreLogic

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.

Oklahoma-based a la mode announced this week that CoreLogic chose to connect its ValuEdge platform with Mercury Network for receipt of the Native XML appraisal data needed for compliance with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's jointly established Uniform Mortgage Data Program (UMDP). A custom plugin will connect CoreLogic with the Mercury Network of real estate appraisers. The plugin will run an extensive set of quality control rules against the report prior to delivery.

Experts blame the massive inventory of existing homes on the market for hindering the housing sector's recovery. The overhang has been inflated by large volumes of foreclosures, and it's expected to grow with millions more coming down the pipeline. One economist says it will take 6.5 million new household formations to absorb the excess inventory. He expects it will take five years to achieve that goal and emerge from the self-defeating cycle of oversupply pushing prices down, the negative equity triggering defaults, and in turn, further increasing the oversupply.

CoreLogic, a provider of information, analytics, and business services, now helps regulated financial institutions meet the federal Interagency Appraisal and Evaluation Guidelines for lending decisions via its new property condition report. The company's new product, OnSite, covers 98.7 percent of parcels in the country, contains local market conditions, and complements automated valuation model (AVM) reports.

Underwater borrowers have become a focus of numerous industry surveys and analyses, and a growing concern for market participants due to the potential of negative equity to trigger default. A recent study by CoreLogic delved deeper into the statistics to examine the distribution of negative equity by default status. Aggregate negative equity among mortgage borrowers was $750 billion as of the end of last year. CoreLogic says 8 percent of that total balance involved mortgages that were in foreclosure.