Housing Wire

AUGUST 28, 2023

Two days after a New York Times exposé of alleged sexual harassment and a culture of fear at the National Association of Realtors , President Kenny Parcell announced his resignation. Parcell was called out for alleged sexual harassment by 16 of the more than two dozen current and former NAR employees interviewed by the Times. “I am deeply troubled by those looking to tarnish my character and mischaracterize my well-intended actions,” Parcell wrote in a letter to NAR’s Executive Committee and Boa

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Sacramento Appraisal Blog

AUGUST 29, 2023

Assumable loans are eye candy in today’s housing market. The idea of taking over somebody’s 2.5% loan sounds amazing, right? It’s technically possible on paper for some loan types, but it’s challenging to pull off in the real world. Yet, if mortgage rates remain high, this is something we’re likely going to hear more about, […] The post The eye-candy of assuming a loan first appeared on Sacramento Appraisal Blog | Real Estate Appraiser.

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Real Estate News

AUGUST 31, 2023

NAR leaders affirmed Bob Goldberg as CEO during an emergency meeting days after the association’s president resigned following sexual harassment allegations.

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Cleveland Appraisal Blog

AUGUST 13, 2023

Hello! I hope you’re having a great summer! Plumbing may be the last thing on your mind right now. If you’re like me, you put off plumbing work until the winter months when there is less to do outside. At least in Cleveland anyway. However, plumbing is a big part of our lives, on many levels. When it comes to plumbing, there are things we can do to save money and avoid future problems.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

HousingWire Lead Analyst Logan Mohtashami appeared on CNBC‘s Squawk on the Street on Wednesday to talk about the health of the housing market , and more specifically about today’s pending home sales data. Mohtashami explained how demand for existing homes is still trending near 21st-century lows. As long as mortgage rates stay near 23-year highs, Mohtashami believes we will see softness in data.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

Mortgage rates ticked down modestly after job openings data for July came out yesterday, but rates remain elevated. Freddie Mac‘s Primary Mortgage Market Survey, which focuses on conventional and conforming loans with a 20% down payment, shows the 30-year fixed rate averaged 7.18% as of Aug. 31, down from last week ’s 7.23%. By contrast, the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage was at 5.66% a year ago at this time.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

A couple of weeks ago, mortgage rates soared to a new 2023 high, reaching over 7% on a 30-year fixed-rate loan for the first time since November 2022. While higher rates are generally viewed with dismay, they often are the end result of a strong economy. Case in point, the private sector added 497,000 jobs in June — more than double many economists’ expectations — while compensation climbed 6.4% from a year ago.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

The pile of lawsuits facing Gary Keller and the real estate firm he co-founded, Keller Williams , just got larger. Former KW CEO John Davis filed his second lawsuit against the firm on Wednesday in the Western District of Texas. In the filings, which name Keller Williams , Keller, former KW president Josh Team, Business MAPS Ltd. and Business MAPS Management LLC as defendants, Davis alleges that the defendants inflated key profitability metrics including company sales and profits to convince ind

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

Reviewing appraisal imagery, an essential step in the valuation review process, is time-consuming and laborious. CoreLogic developed Image Analytics to drive innovation in the appraisal review process and help lenders and mortgage industry professionals analyze property images quickly and accurately. This technology eliminates the need for manual, multi-touchpoint review, which saves time and reduces errors.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) received the green light to move forward with its acquisition of Black Knight after the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) accepted a binding settlement. Under the agreement, both firms will divest Black Knight’s loan origination system (LOS) Empower business and product and pricing engine (PPE) unit Optimal Blue to a subsidiary of Constellation Software Inc, the FTC said in a release on Thursday.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

The Leslie Clarke Team, the top small agent team in Connecticut according to RealTrends , is joining the Connecticut office of Compass , the company announced on Tuesday. The move comes as Compass expands its tech offerings for agents. “This transition provides me access to the industry’s premier technology platform, an energetic office culture, and an expansive referral network spanning the nation,” said Clarke, whose team was previously part of William Raveis.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

Adam Wiener, Redfin ’s president of real estate services, is leaving the brokerage after nearly 16 years of service, CEO Glenn Kelman announced in an email sent to employees on Tuesday. His last day at the company will be Friday, Sept. 8. During his tenure, Wiener first served as a product manager for agent tools. He then went on to run the partner program, analytics, marketing and a variety of new businesses.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

Encompass Lending Group , a subsidiary of real-estate services platform Fathom Holdings, has acquired Austin, Texas-based Elite Financing Group, the company announced Thursday. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Elite Financing Group will operate under the umbrella of Cary, North Carolina-based Encompass, which has a presence in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

Digital mortgage lender Better Home & Finance faces a $1.86 million suit for breaching advertising placement agreements with digital and print publisher Meredith Operations Corporation. Better failed to pay for two “insertion orders” – agreements where Meredith would place ads on its digital platforms in exchange for the mortgage lender’s fee – from the summer to the winter of 2022, according to a filing in the U.S.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

Mortgage applications for home purchases and refinances increased for the first time in five weeks but remain at low levels. For the week that ended Aug. 25, mortgage applications picked up 2.3% from the prior week , according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association. “ Mortgage rates were mostly unchanged last week, with the 30-year fixed rate remaining at 7.31 percent – the highest since December 2000.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

Since last weekend’s New York Times exposé of alleged sexual harassment and a “culture of fear” at the National Association of Realtors (NAR), speculation about what happens next at the trade association has been in overdrive. HousingWire has heard from several sources that NAR, which serves more than 1.5 million real estate professionals , has planned an emergency leadership team meeting for Thursday, which may result in resignations.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

Freddie Mac on Wednesday announced that company veteran Peter Lillestolen will serve as vice president, production and sales of Targeted Affordable Housing (TAH) at Freddie Mac Multifamily. Lillestolen, a 12-year veteran of the government-sponsored enterprise (GSE), has worked in multifamily in several different roles. He began his career there as an analyst in the Capital Markets division, later serving in various leadership roles on the production team.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

After stepping into his new position as CEO of Realtor.com in June, Damian Eales is already shaking up the industry with swift action and a bold expansion plan. Last week, at the Tom Ferry Sucess Summit in Dallas, Eales took the stage for a fireside chat with Ferry where he shared his vision for the company’s future and how it plans to supplant Zillow as the No. 1 real estate portal.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

Core inflation met consensus expectations today, with goods prices declining and shelter inflation continuing to moderate, said Zillow Senior Economist Orphe Divounguy. The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, excluding food and energy, rose 0.2% in July after increasing 0.2% in June , the Commerce Department said Friday. Meanwhile, core PCE — the Federal Reserve ’s preferred inflation gauge — also rose 0.2% month-over-month.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

In what is perhaps the most traditional sector of housing, change has arrived. However, a year after the GSEs announced new appraisal modernization solutions, as they’re more widely adopted, questions arise. How do the solutions work? Why do we need them? Who is eligible to take advantage of them? And as a loan officer (LO), why should I care? We’re here to answer those questions, specifically with you in mind, LOs.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

NexTier , the holding company of NexTier Bank , will acquire Mars Bancorp , the holding company of Mars Bank. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. The combined company and branch locations will operate under the NexTier Bank brand, both banks said in a release Thursday. With the acquisition, NexTier Bank will have total assets in excess of $2.6 billion.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 31, 2023

New York-based asset management firm Sculptor Capital Management said Wednesday it rejected an improved bid from a group of investors. Sculptor said it still prefers the deal with Rithm Capital due to the closing certainty. “The Special Committee has not concluded that the Consortium’s most recent revised proposal constitutes a superior proposal or is reasonably expected to lead to a superior proposal (as defined in the Company’s merger agreement with Rithm Capital Corp.),̶

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

A group of banks in Kentucky is seeking to block the implementation and enforcement of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s small business lending rule , the latest in a series of challenges brought by parties including legislators and industry groups. The Kentucky Bankers Association and a coalition of banks in the state filed a preliminary injunction last week to block the rule from taking effect, according to court documents reviewed by HousingWire.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

Mat Ishbia , chairman and chief executive officer at United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM), provided more than half of the mortgage company’s outstanding shares as a guarantee to secure loans ahead of the acquisition of the Phoenix Suns , according to a Bloomberg report. According to the report, Ishbia pledged stock he controls to back two loans that were finalized days before his purchase of the Suns was approved.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 30, 2023

Fast-growing firm The Real Brokerage is welcoming yet another top-performing agent to the company. Arizona-based David Newman and his 12-member team, David Newman Partners, are moving to The Real Brokerage, according to an announcement on Wednesday. Newman and his team serve clients in Phoenix, Scottsdale , Paradise Valley and Southeast Valley. According to the release, his team closed nearly 500 transaction sides worth roughly $300 million in sales volume in 2022.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

Home prices showed resilience in June as low supply drove demand in spite of high mortgage rates. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index posted a 0.7% month-over-month increase after a seasonal adjustment in June — marking the fifth consecutive monthly increase. Meanwhile, the 10-City and 20-City composites both posted increases of 0.9%.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

Texas continues to outpace other states in attracting new residents, according to migration data from John Burns , with Houston, San Antonio and Fort Worth showing strong housing demand. The other top cities for in-migration include Jacksonville, Florida, Charlotte, North Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee. However, the Austin housing market, which boomed during the pandemic , is now seeing barely positive migration numbers, along with Phoenix , Arizona, and Las Vegas, Nevada.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

American Bank of Oklahoma has agreed to invest $1.5 million in credit opportunities for neighborhoods of color in the Tulsa metropolitan area as a settlement with the Department of Justice in an alleged redlining case. The bank denies the allegations. The DOJ complaint, filed in federal court, claims that the bank failed to provide mortgage lending services from 2017 through at least 2021 in neighborhoods in and around Tulsa , including those that were the site of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

Homebuilders are poised for a strong next few months if recent history is any guide, based on data published last week by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Fall months in recent years have yielded higher home prices and less time on market for new homes than the rest of the year, with last September and October setting records in both categories.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

The second quarter 2023 was a boon for real estate teams, beating out financial performance in Q1 2023 , according the Streamlined Quarterly Team Benchmarking Report, which looked at the financial performance of more than 200 teams across the nation. Steamlined, based in Arizona, has a roster of hundreds of U.S. real estate teams and individual agents as clients for their accounting and bookkeeping services.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

Recruitment is a crucial determinant of growth and success for real estate brokerages. Like your customer, the recruitment process can be visualized as a sales funnel, where potential recruits enter at the top, and the best-suited agents emerge at the bottom as ideal members of your team or brokerage. Understanding and optimizing each stage of this funnel is critical to streamline recruitment and attract top-tier talent.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 29, 2023

Maryland-based lender Lower sued four former employees for fraud which it says has cost the firm more than $4 million in financial losses. Lower also accused Texas-based lender AmCap Mortgage of conspiring in a scheme with its former employee to induce other staff to abruptly leave Lower. Jason Ozment, Lower’s former vice president and branch manager in Plano, Texas, misappropriated vast amounts of confidential business and trade secret information concerning its business and its customers, incl

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 28, 2023

In a shrinking mortgage market, fee pressures are the main challenge for appraisers, according to a new survey from the National Association of Realtors. In 2023, nearly half of appraisers surveyed said fee pressure was their biggest challenge, up 20 percentage points since last year. Fee pressure was followed by appraisal management company (AMC) requests for revisions (28%) and technology fees (26%), a category that was not included in 2022 survey responses.

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Housing Wire

AUGUST 28, 2023

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) reached a multi-billion dollar settlement with a collection of brands that offer credit repair services to American consumers, the agency announced on Monday. The settlement includes some of the largest credit repair brands in the country, including Lexington Law and CreditRepair.com , following a court ruling that found the companies had collected illegal advance fees for credit repair services through telemarketing.

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