Prospective borrowers with strong credit are locking in mortgages this week at the lowest rates in more than a year, loan officers and lending executives told HousingWire on Friday. A sample of more than a dozen industry professionals said they were quoting most borrowers in the high 5% to low 6% ra

Auction.com, the nation’s largest online platform for distressed real estate sales, recently reported that demand for homes sold at auction began to decline late in the second quarter of 2024 even as the available supply of foreclosed homes also contracted.Proprietary data from the California-based

For real estate professionals, the business practice changes outlined in the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) nationwide commission lawsuit settlement agreement —which are set to go into effect on Aug. 17 — are top of mind. But when it comes to the financial performance of their brokerages, i

HighTechLending, a California-based top-10 reverse mortgage lender, announced on Friday that it is rebranding its wholesale lending division to American Senior Lending Wholesale Division in an effort to better align its identity with key business lines designed to serve older borrowers.To get a bett

Older Americans are increasingly being caught up in elaborate scams designed by perpetrators to drain them of their retirement savings, with the detail and scale of such scams sometimes requiring the intervention of federal law enforcement. This is according to an investigative report published this

The typical U.S. home seller pays a 2.55% commission to the real estate agent hired by their buyer, down from an average of 2.62% in January, according to a Redfin analysis of MLS data. In other words, the March 2024 settlement between the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and plaintiffs in the

The Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced on Friday that it has published a final rule in the Federal Register opening up communications between mortgage lenders and defaulted borrowers to remote and electronic methods. This is designed to broaden the ways for borrowers to meet with lenders

A new sponsored episode of the HousingWire Daily podcast — hosted live from the 2024 HousingWire AI Summit — features Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler in conversation with CoreLogic data experts Amy Gromowski and Anand Singh.Gromowski, the company’s head of data science, and Singh, the vice president o

Santa Ana, California-based mortgage services and data firm Consolidated Analytics announced on Friday that it has acquired the assets of investor claims and loss-analysis company Investor Claim Solutions (ICS). Consolidated Analytics is a private company and terms were not disclosed. The company st

The supply of new single-family homes is sinking, while accelerated multifamily construction is bringing more rental units online.These two factors have resulted in renter households growing at three times the rate of homeowner households, according to a new report from Redfin that crunched U.S. Cen

With just over two weeks to go until the National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) commission lawsuit settlement agreement will require agents to have a signed buyer representation agreement prior to taking a client on a home tour, Zillow has released 24 state-specific versions of the touring agreemen

Despite some recent relief from mortgage rates, top executives at the parent of Rocket Mortgage continue to expect a challenging landscape for the industry in the coming months, mainly due to regulatory changes, low affordability levels and consolidation.What will be their playbook? Leaders at the D

Sen. Mike Braun, R-Indiana., and a coalition of eight other Republican U.S. Senators are taking aim at energy-efficiency standards for new housing construction, citing the additional costs they would add to the purchase of new homes.In April, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD

It is fitting that the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris are the backdrop for the final two weeks leading up to when the real estate industry will undergo its largest structural change in decades — a feat of near-Olympic proportions.Like the athletes in Paris, Realtors and brokers across the U.S. have b

West Palm Beach, Florida-based Onity Group, the parent company of top-five reverse mortgage lender Liberty Reverse Mortgage, recorded a decline in income during the second quarter of 2024.Despite the financial result, Onity — formerly known as Ocwen Financial Corp. — is doubling down on the reverse

Connecticut-based Ellington Financial, the parent company of top-10 reverse mortgage lender and servicer Longbridge Financial, announced this week that it has completed a securitization backed by a pool of proprietary reverse mortgages.The $232 million securitization closed on Thursday and was backe

For anyone wondering what a Democratic or Republican presidential administration might look like for the housing market in 2025 and beyond, industry experts can provide some insights based on their experience in government, proximity to D.C. or decades in the private sector.Overall, they believe tha

The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage dropped to 6.62% on Thursday, a new low for 2024 that appears to be tied to the expectation that the Federal Reserve could move to cut interest rates at its next meeting in September. This is according to data reported by Mortgage News Daily.On Wednesday, Fed

Talk to a real estate agent about expectations for the fall and they’ll likely mention that the housing market will be slow due in part to the election, a belief in the industry that’s become rote.But a new report from John Burns Research and Consulting refutes that notion. The firm crunched 35 year

Mortgage servicer and lender Planet Home Lending is acquiring the retail division assets of employee-owned Axia Home Loans, HousingWire has learned. Employees of the Washington state-based Axia, a retail and wholesale lender, were informed of the transaction on Wednesday afternoon in a one-hour call