Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Realtors can usually count on their biggest season being spring, followed by summer, but nothing about 2020 has been normal, including home-buying patterns. With shut-down orders in the spring, summer became the new home-buying season, but homebuyers were still incredibly active in August. Now, believe it or not, fall home-buying season is in full swing.
Midtown Appraisal Group
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
How do appraisers arrive at a valuation of your home? We’ve talked before about the step-by-step process involved in the residential appraisal process. But what are appraisers really looking for when they’re walking around your property, making notes on their clipboard or tablet?
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The Robert Weiler Company
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
In the age of social media, we’re frequently asking friends and family for their thoughts on a subject. Unlike a commercial real estate appraisal review, most of the answers from “Facebook experts” are not fact-based; the responses on your social media post will range from beliefs to convictions to opinions. Fortunately, we do not conduct commercial real estate appraisals on social media!
McKissock
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Once upon a time, real estate listings were bloodless facts about the number of bedrooms, square footage, and amenities like a lap pool and flat backyard. Today, experienced agents are putting on their writers’ caps and telling compelling stories about properties for sale and using storytelling to help sell a house. From cradle to grave, people love stories, and that doesn’t change when they search for a property to buy or rent.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
Urban District Realty , a Washington, D.C.-based brokerage, announced last week the launch of its custom real estate listing system, PROJETO. This system uses virtual reality technology which allows clients to be put in a virtual representation of a property that hasn’t been built yet. “PROJETO specifically is for homes that have not been built yet, these are homes that are still in development and that is something that when we did all of our research and looked around, no one else is doi
Willowbrook Valuation
OCTOBER 1, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted virtually every industry in the United States. However, each industry is being impacted in its own unique way. In this blog series, we have been taking a closer look at specific property types and discussing how they’ve changed since the start of the global pandemic. So far, we’ve covered Hotels […]. The post Assessing the Impact of COVID-19 on: Restaurants appeared first on Willowbrook Valuation & Advisory Services.
Property Appraisal Zone brings together the best content for appraisal professionals from the widest variety of industry thought leaders.
McKissock
OCTOBER 2, 2020
In July 2020, the Tennessee Real Estate Appraiser Commission approved three qualifying education courses to be completed online. Basic Appraisal Principles, Basic Appraisal Procedures, and the 15-hour National USPAP Course no longer have to be completed in a live classroom. Each of these Tennessee appraisal license classes are now available online at McKissock.com.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index of home prices in 20 U.S. cities gained 3.9% in July from a year ago, the biggest advance since 2018, as rock-bottom mortgage rates made it possible for people to bid higher for properties. The increase was bigger than the 3.5% advance in the prior month, and it was the largest annual gain since December 2018.
National Association of Realtors
OCTOBER 1, 2020
Listen as NAR’s VP of Engagement Charlie Dawson and Megan Booth, NAR’s Director of Federal Housing, Valuation, Commercial Real Estate Policies & Programs, discuss the work being done to navigate orders from the CDC and Washington, D.C., and what that work means for housing providers and commercial practitioners around the country.
REX Real Estate
OCTOBER 1, 2020
Urban lofts and artists studios converted from old warehouses and industrial buildings are abundant…
McKissock
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
Regression is a mathematical tool used by real estate appraisers to determine the likely value, or adjustment rates, of various property characteristics and ultimately predict sale prices. Rather than relying on human opinion, listings, or previous appraisals, regression analyzes actual sales data to determine adjustment rates, assigning statistical value to characteristics such as GLA square footage, number of garages, acreage, age, and so on.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 1, 2020
The average U.S. mortgage rate for a 30-year fixed loan is 2.88% this week, falling from last week’s 2.9% , Freddie Mac said in a report on Thursday. The rate is now two basis points from an all-time low set three weeks ago. The average fixed rate for a 15-year mortgage was 2.36%, falling from last week’s 2.4% to a level that’s one basis point away from the record 2.35% set two weeks ago, the mortgage giant said.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Riddle me this: How can home sales grow when we have no homes to buy? When a monthly home sales print fails to meet expectations the excuse often used is that inventory is too low to meet the demand. But not so long ago, for more than a year we had negative year-over-year monthly data with inventory rising on a year-over-year basis. Now we have the opposite scenario.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
Consumer confidence, a key measure in gauging whether people are willing to make big-ticket purchases like homes , surged the most in more than 17 years during September, surpassing the expectations of economists. The gauge rose to 101.8, the highest level since the start of the pandemic, from August’s upwardly revised 86.3, the Conference Board said on Tuesday.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
The recent new home sales data is at levels last seen in 2006, with monthly supply data back down to the low levels when new home sales data was really good. No, this is not a new home sales housing bubble as we are far from total new home sales being where they were in 2005. However, for the first time in more than a decade we have the demand needed to prompt builders to really push housing starts as the monthly supply data has collapsed this year.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 2, 2020
This week the Conference of State Bank Supervisors issued a final proposed prudential standards rule for comment to address their concerns with nonbank servicers. The proposed rule addressed capital, liquidity, governance, policy related to entity survivorship, and more. It’s a meaty proposal and one whose intent should be welcomed as it can help to further lessen the unusual focus that nonbank lenders and servicers have been getting in recent years.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
The American Land Title Association , which represents more than 6,400 title insurance companies, title and settlement agents, independent abstractors, title searchers and real estate attorneys, announced it will hold its ALTA ONE event virtually for the first time. The association announced it will be holding its event “from couches to conference rooms” Oct. 6-8.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
With the official passage of the California Consumer Protection law on Friday, California’s Department of Business Oversight will be renamed the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation and given expanded powers. The state legislature says the move will increase financial regulation and consumer protection in the Golden State. California Gov.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 2, 2020
After six weeks of steady declines, the number of mortgages in active forbearance rose by 21,000 last week, according to a new report. Though the raw number increased, the number of all mortgages in active forbearance remained at 6.8%, unchanged from the week prior , Black Knight said in a report on Friday. As of Sept. 29, 3.6 million homeowners remain in COVID-19-related forbearance plans representing $751 billion in unpaid principal.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 1, 2020
Realtor.com and Rocket Mortgage , two of the biggest companies in the digital real estate space, have formed a key advertising partnership that their competitors are sure to notice. Effective Thursday, homebuyers on Realtor.com who say they wish to be pre-approved for a mortgage will see an advertisement from Rocket Mortgage that will allow them to receive pre-approval in as little as 20 minutes.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
As the Fed pulls out all the stops to stimulate economic activity, mortgage rates have reached record lows. In light of rampant uncertainty and economic hardship, homeowners are leaping at the opportunity to save thousands in annual payments , and the refi market is booming. This sounds like great news for lenders, for whom millions of newly refi-eligible mortgages means a lot of new business coming in.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 2, 2020
Texas-based mortgage lender Caliber Home Loans is the latest mortgage firm to ride the IPO wave, filing paperwork to potentially go public this year at a valuation north of $2 billion, according to a new report. The company, owned by private equity firm Lone Star Funds , filed confidential IPO paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission and could make its public debut as soon as next week, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 29, 2020
The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System , the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency finalized two rules on Tuesday that were initiated in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. These include one that temporarily defers appraisal and evaluation requirements for up to 120 days after the closing of certain residential and commercial real estate transactions, the release said.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
Cannae Holdings and Senator Investment Group sent a letter to CoreLogic shareholders on Friday urging them to vote for nine new board members to support their unsolicited buyout bid. “One need look no further than the 40+% rise in the company’s stock price since our involvement, or CoreLogic’s largest shareholder for over seven years selling their entire 17% position around our proposal price, to see that this is what shareholders want,” the companies said in the letter, which it publicized via
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 2, 2020
The U.S. unemployment rate in September hit a six-month low of 7.9%, down half a percentage point from August’s 8.4%, the Labor Department said on Friday. With 1 million people making up that half percentage drop, the department estimates that now 12.6 million Americans are still unemployed, according to the Household Survey Data. Though unemployment has continued to decline since April’s 14.7% record spike, the decline has begun to slow.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Howard Hanna Real Estate Services closed a huge deal late Tuesday, announcing a strategic partnership with Rand Realty , giving the massive independent brokerage a sizable foothold in the booming suburbs of New York City. The financial terms of the deal, which will see Rand Realty shed its Better Homes & Gardens affiliation, weren’t disclosed.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 28, 2020
A year ago, long before anyone talked about a coronavirus, Rocket Companies ‘ stock performance, or the curious acronym S-P-A-C, Mat Ishbia had set his plan in motion. Ishbia’s company, United Wholesale Mortgage , had by that point climbed the ranks to become the second-biggest mortgage originator in the country. UWM issued nearly 350,000 mortgages worth $108 billion in 2019, about three times more than the year prior.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 1, 2020
The complaint announced on Friday alleges that in order to significantly increase its loan production, Nutter used unqualified underwriters lacking the requirements established by HUD to review and approve HECMs that Nutter ultimately insured with the FHA. The complaint also alleged the lender of forging signatures of qualified underwriters to make it appear that a qualified underwriter had approved the loan.
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 2, 2020
As COVID-19 swept through the U.S., there is one state that has refused to accept remote online notarization laws, even as stay-at-home orders forced many other states to temporarily accept RON. California, the most populated state in the U.S., has no legislation permitting RON, and some experts say it never will. In fact, California has even gone so far as to write to Congress, opposing proposed bills that would make RON legal in all 50 states, saying it was an overstep of state’s rights and th
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 1, 2020
Though he wouldn’t comment on recent r eports that he is raising $100 million in capital at a $4 billion valuation , Better.com CEO Vishal Garg had no qualms on Thursday in outlining his vision for an eventual public debut. Garg, a serial entrepreneur who founded the digital-only lender in 2014, revealed at LendIt Fintech’s USA 2020 virtual event that his company is now profitable. “I can’t comment about any other fundraising, other than to say Better today is actually fu
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
HousingWire spoke to Stewart Title CEO Fred Eppinger about the company’s new focus on growth, recent strategic moves and how it’s reframing the way it does business. HousingWire: What inspired the current brand refresh for Stewart? Fred Eppinger: Stewart was distracted for the last several years – now, we’re much more committed to winning and making sure that we are providing the kind of service that our clients are going to expect every day on every transaction.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Mortgage applications fell 4.8% last week, according to a report from the Mortgage Bankers Association. The refinance index also experienced a 7% decline, driven by a 9% drop in conventional refinance applications, said Joel Kan, MBA’s associate vice president of economic and industry forecasting. However, refinances remained 52% higher than the same week one year ago.
Housing Wire
SEPTEMBER 30, 2020
Altisource Portfolio Solutions , a provider of real estate, mortgage and foreclosure services, said it has expanded its Texas operations center to handle the overflow from home-loan servicers trying to cope with customers requesting forbearances. The Luxembourg-based company said it is adding customer service workers to its operations center in El Paso, Texas, who will handle forbearance requests as a “brand representative,” meaning they will act as if they work for the mortgage servicer who con
Housing Wire
OCTOBER 2, 2020
Call it what you want – a disruption, a revolution, a transformation or perhaps a thorn in your side, there is no denying the pandemic has stirred the housing industry in all its sectors. How companies adapt and pivot while fostering their teammates’ growth may very well decide who will be on the right and wrong side of history after the gloves – and masks – come off.
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