housing wire

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) announced on Wednesday that it will lower the VA Native American Direct Loan (NADL) program interest rate from 6% to 2.5% in an effort to make housing loans more affordable for Native American

The Federal Reserve‘s decision to raise the federal funds rate by 25 basis points on Wednesday signaled that officials are still focused on bringing down inflation to 2% while monitoring how much recent bank failures slow lending in the economy

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on Tuesday announced it has awarded $54 million to 182 fair housing organizations across 42 states under its Fair Housing Initiatives Program (FHIP). The goal is to provide support to organizations

HousingWire recently spoke to Tom Kriby, vice president of client development and partnerships at Westwood Insurance Agency, about how working with an insurance agency can simplify the closing process for their customers, even in times of interest rate uncertainty. HousingWire:

The current bank crisis hit California-based Pacific Western Bank, a community bank owned by PacWest Bancorp that has a focus on real estate and commercial loans.  Following the collapses of Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank over the

The typical homebuyer’s down payment was down 10% year over year in January 2023, according to a report released Wednesday by Redfin. The report is based on data collected by Redfin from county record across 40 of the most populous

Homebot, a home education portal that keeps people connected to their loan officers and real estate agents, acquired Quo Finance, a mobile app for first-time homebuyers. “Quo will massively accelerate Homebot’s mission to connect people to make informed homeownership decisions,”

Existing home sales had a huge beat of estimates on Tuesday. This wasn’t shocking for people who follow how I track housing data. To understand why we had such a beat in sales, you only need to go back to

Consumer demand for home loans rose for the third consecutive week due to declining mortgage rates, following the turbulence in the financial markets caused by regional bank failures.  But the same bank crisis is bringing volatility to the mortgage-backed securities

Title industry revenue dropped 19% year over year in 2022, according to data released Thursday by Fitch Ratings. This 19% decline is on a GAAP basis for the Fitch Ratings title universe which includes Fidelity National Financial, First American, Old

Executives at Rocket Companies are engaged in a very tricky balancing act: they must drastically reduce expenses to return the company to profitability. And at the same time they must continue to invest in their business to avoid losing further

Real estate valuation technology provider Clear Capital on Thursday launched Universal Data Collection (UDC), a product designed to support appraisal modernization. The UDC product provides lenders with tools for scalability, interchangeability and loan management, according to a statement. UDC will

Temperatures are rising, the sun is setting later, and the daffodils are starting to peek their green leaves out of the earth — spring is coming. And just like the bears who are starting to wake up from their long

Blank-check firm Aurora Acquisition Corp. extended the deadline to complete its merger with struggling digital mortgage lender Better.com for the third time. The deadline for the merger is now September. The decision was made during Aurora’s shareholder’s meeting held on

Ginnie Mae has promoted Sam Valverde to principal executive vice president, where he will serve as the the second-in-command to Ginnie Mae President Alanna McCargo. The government corporation is also seeking an executive vice president and chief operating officer to

Mortgage rates are surging again due to sustained economic growth and continued inflation, eclipsing 7% on Thursday. And it could be a while before they tick back down, economists say. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage on Thursday, March 2 touched 7.10%,

When the entire mortgage industry saw volume drop by more than half in 2022, nearly every lender emerged with battle scars. Rising rates caused refinances to dry up, production plummeted, and pink slips were issued to employees. Non-qualified mortgage (non-QM)

San Francisco-based SaaS technology provider Polly on Monday announced its API integration with Total Expert, a customer engagement platform purpose-built for financial institutions. Through this API integration, users can populate MLS and non-MLS rate flyers in a short period of

Income verification platform Truework has added its automated service ordering feature to Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) Mortgage Technology’’s loan origination system Encompass. The integration is now built on the latest Encompass Partner Connect application programming interface (API) platform and is available

Another week down in 2023 and we’re seeing crazier action in the housing market as purchase application data fell, mortgage rates rose again, and weekly inventory took another dive with a noticeable move lower in new listing data. Here is

Americans’ debt balances continued to compound in 2022 as inflation put pressure on budgets and the cost of borrowing increased. Aggregate household debt, which includes all outstanding credit market debt held by consumers, increased by $394 billion in the fourth

Servicers know all about the regulatory complexity — whether the rules are coming from the state or federal level or the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) – that often leaves them in a constant state of audit and exam. With

Rent-to-own startup Divvy Homes has reportedly conducted a new round of layoffs on Wednesday, which included cuts to a number of high-level positions. This is at least the second round of layoffs for the company in the last six months.

Fintech Figure Technologies will partner with NovaWulf Digital Management to provide blockchain technology solutions for a proposed reorganization of troubled crypto lender Celsius. The partnership was made public by Figure on Thursday and comes a day after an announcement from