For Multifamily Players, How Profound Is The Slowdown in Residential?
Commercial real estate finance professionals who concentrate on the multifamily market have enjoyed substantial success during the past two years. Apartment fundamentals have...
Mortgage Banking Comes To MySpace
The search for new business can sometimes take lenders into fairly unlikely environments. Case in point: a number of mortgage lenders have staked...
Chicago Mercantile Exchange To Introduce Commercial Real Estate Futures
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which recently announced plans to merge with the Chicago Board of Trade, plans to introduce a futures product based...
A Tale Of Two Maines: Subprime Lending Or Predatory Lending?
Is subprime lending good for the local economy in Maine? The answer is - it depends who you're asking.Earlier this year, the Center...
MetLife Poised To Sell Another Landmark NYC Property
U.S. life insurer and financial services company MetLife Inc. says it is considering the sale of its Peter Cooper Village and Stuyvesant Town...
Slapping Down Predatory Lending, State By State
Predatory lending practices are catching the attention of legislators at both a state and federal level. New laws and programs aimed at protecting...
Spreads May Widen If Rates Rise Further
Capitalization rates, or cap rates, in the U.S. commercial real estate market have begun to ratchet higher, according to market participants. Some industry...
Substantial FHA Reform Before Congress
When the U.S. Senate reconvenes this week, mortgage lenders will be anticipating the most significant overhaul of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) lending in...
New Coalition Fights Insider Fraud
A Indy mac group of mortgage firms has decided it has had enough of insider mortgage fraud. The companies have banded together to...
Tougher Rating Criteria May Impact Issuers
Changes to Standard & Poor's (S&P) rating criteria will require greater credit enhancements for some nonagency residential mortgage-backed pools.Those beefed-up enhancements, which were...
National License System In The Works
Imagine going to one Web site to apply for a mortgage license in several states. And imagine accessing a single database to check...
A New Standard For Electronic Mortgage Data?
A battle is ongoing for a new type of electronic data standard for mortgages.The Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization (MISMO) has developed an...
Did You Make The Right Decision In Becoming A Mortgage Banker?
In this dog-eat-dog world with rates rising and what seems like dwindling profits, many new bankers are asking themselves if they made the...
Private Aggregators Outpurchasing Government Agencies
Private aggregators continued to take a significant chunk of community banks' secondary market loan sales, according to America's Community Bankers' (ACB) survey of...
Loan Officer Compensation Rules Pose Difficulties
Loan officer compensation is a controversial and difficult topic for mortgage lenders. Lenders face tough questions when classifying their loan officers as independent...
40-Year Products Becoming More Prevalent
As borrowers stretch to meet mortgage payments, more lenders are adding 40-year products to their repertoires. That includes 40-year fixed-rate mortgages, as well...
Lenders Are Gung-Ho On Alt-A Loans
Lenders are continuing to pursue the Alt-A sector, called 'one of the last bastions of profitability.'
GMAC Residential Funding Corp. (GMAC-RFC), a Minneapolis-based wholly owned...
Commercial Lenders Using Different Strategies To Reach Residential Originators
More commercial lenders are finding that residential originators are a viable channel for producing small-balance commercial loans. The lenders are taking different strategies,...
Investors Trying To Be More Cautious
Concerned that the record run-up in home price escalation may be ending, loan portfolio buyers have become more aggressive in the vetting process,...
Subprime Refinance Levels Surprisingly Strong
While expectations have called for refinances to drop as interest rates increased, subprime loans have continued to refinance at surprisingly high levels. Â...