housing wire

Our local market feature spotlights five different areas across the country for each HousingWire Magazine. Local real estate agents, loan officers and appraisers from each city share what characteristics are currently defining their housing markets. Rapid City, South Dakota Rapid

Three alleged charlatans from Houston have been nabbed by federal authorities and taken into custody on charges related to mortgage fraud, credit repair and government loan fraud, the Department of Justice said on Friday. The DOJ claims that Heather Ann

This week’s HW+ member spotlight features Omar Ennabe, who serves as president at Ennkar, a reverse mortgage lender. Below, Ennabe answers questions about the housing industry: HousingWire: What is your current favorite HW+ article and why? Omar Ennabe: I enjoy reading anything Chris Clow

Women are not only dominating in the mortgage and real estate industry, but also they are making room at the table for a new generation of women to do the same. To help fuel this growth for future and current

Both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac this week made two senior hires that increase diversity in leadership at the enterprises, where the leadership skews toward white and male. At Freddie Mac, Dennis Hermonstyne Jr., who previously worked at Santander Bank,

Guaranteed Rate is looking to diversify its product mix amid the mortgage downturn. The mortgage lender has rolled out its first personal loan product. Customers can apply for personal loans in 10 minutes and receive funds between $4,000 and $50,000

Flyhomes is the latest venture capital-fueled real estate company to fall victim to the slowdown in the housing market, opting to lay off 20% of its staff this week. To operate in a fiscally “prudent and sustainable” manner in the

Fannie Mae has executed two new Credit Insurance Risk Transfer (CIRT) deals — the seventh and eighth of 2022 — dubbed CIRT 2022-7 and CIRT 2022-8.  The two transactions convey a combined $1 billion in mortgage credit risk to private insurers

Live Oak Bancshares and its subsidiary Live Oak Bank have appointed Casey Crawford, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Movement Mortgage, to its board of directors.  North Carolina-based Live Oak Bank’s goal is to be “America’s small business bank,”

Non-QM lender First Guaranty Mortgage Corp. (FGMC) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection at the end of June — leaving four warehouse lenders on the hook for more than $415 million. Sprout Mortgage imploded in early July, leaving its employees

HousingWire’s Vanguard award program honors executives in housing who have become leaders in their respective fields and are moving markets forward, each and every day. And today marks the last day of the 2022 nomination period for this prestigious award.

Demand for mortgages declined for the second consecutive week, led by a dip in purchase mortgage applications — despite rates on a downward trend. The market composite index, a measure of mortgage loan application volume, decreased 1.7% for the week ending

Volatile mortgage rates and economic uncertainty have rocked the housing market this year, challenging mortgage lenders, real estate agents, title companies and appraisal firms to adapt quickly to changing conditions. That’s why we’ve designed our HW Annual event Oct. 3-5

California-based Pennymac launched a product that can freeze mortgage rates as many as 90 days, in a bid to attract more borrowers to the market amid volatile rates. Dubbed “Lock & Shop,” the product, rolled out in mid-June, has two

Lenders continued to tighten credit standards in June as higher mortgage rates slowed refinance and purchase activity. The monthly Mortgage Credit Availability Index (MCAI) fell by 0.3% in June, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. A decline of the index,

Luke Tomaszewski, an appraiser doing home inspections in the aftermath of the housing bust, was traveling as much as an hour across Chicago just to snap exterior photos of bank-owned properties. Sitting in traffic, Tomaszewski wished he could pay an

In a few months, the loss mitigation measures that have kept close to 100,000 veterans from foreclosure during COVID-19 will end. Decisions of policymakers at the Department of Veterans Affairs will determine what happens to those borrowers. The VA also faces challenges

Digital real estate closing platform, Qualia, announced the release of a new mortgage lender edition of its Qualia Connect platform on Tuesday. According to Qualia, this release means that the Connect platform will now be able to integrate directly into

San Francisco-based Unison is extending its reach in the heartland by expanding its shared-equity loan program to homeowners in Nebraska. The move follows the opening of an office in Omaha earlier this year and reaching the milestone as of June 30 of

The loan quality of mortgage pools backing private-label securitization (PLS) deals has remained solid this year through the end of June, even as deal volume slowed appreciably between the first and second quarters.  In addition, the average coupon for PLS

Nonbank lender loanDepot is making what appears to be the largest series of cuts in the mortgage industry this year, eliminating 4,800 jobs over the course of 2022. Overall, the California-based lender is implementing a program dubbed “Vision 2025” to save

This week’s HW+ member spotlight features Jeremy Potter, chief evangelist at Stavvy, a 2022 Tech100 Mortgage winner. Potter was recently promoted after serving as head of legal and capital markets and is a thought leader in the industry, regularly sharing his insights

All lenders must explain their rationale when denying credit to loan applicants, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau affirmed Thursday, after looking into whether companies claiming exemption because they rely on “complex algorithms” were in violation of federal anti-discrimination law. The

Donna Corley, head of the single-family division at Freddie Mac, is stepping down from her post at the government-sponsored enterprise. Corley will stay on until Nov. 25 as executive vice president and special advisor, reporting to Michael Hutchins, president of