Members of the reverse mortgage industry were surprised to learn that U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Marcia Fudge announced on Monday that she would be resigning from her post effective March 22. HUD deputy secretary Adrianne Todman will serve as acting HUD secretar

Oregon lawmakers last week approved a landmark $370 million housing package, The Associated Press reported. The vote followed an intense 35-day legislative session. Introduced by Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek, the bill aims to invigorate home construction in the state. Central to the bill is a revision

Remote online notarization (RON) platform NotaryCam expanded its independent notary platform customer base by 46% in 2023, according to an announcement on Monday.The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of title firm Stewart.In addition to expanding its notary platform customer base, NotaryCam also

President Joe Biden’s proposals for the housing and mortgage markets, announced during the 2024 State of the Union address on Thursday night, are “dead on arrival or troubling,” according to Isaac Boltansky, an analyst for financial services firm BTIG.  Some of the proposals, which include tax incen

Marcia Fudge, the 18th Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), announced her resignation from office, according to an announcement released on Monday by HUD. Her last day will be March 22. Adrianne Todman, the current Deputy Secretary and HUD veteran, was named Actin

Digital mortgage automation solution provider Floify launched a mortgage point-of-sale (POS) platform for lenders.Configured to give independent mortgage banks, federally insured banks and credit unions the needed tools at an accessible price point, Floify Lender Edition aims to increase lender prof

We survived jobs week and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell talking to Congress, with mortgage rates ending the week below 7%. But will mortgage rates keep heading lower? If so, what will this do to inventory levels? Let’s look at this week’s tracker data to get clues for the future.Mortgage ra

Everyone was waiting to see if this week’s jobs report would send mortgage rates higher, which is what happened last month. Instead, the 10-year yield had a muted response after the headline number beat estimates, but we have negative job revisions from previous months. The Federal Reserve’s fear of

In remarks made Thursday to the Senate Banking Committee this week, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said he expects some U.S. banks to fail in the coming months because of declining values and defaults in their commercial real estate loan portfolios.According to reporting by multiple outlets, in

The Desjardins Group, a Quebec-based lender, is no longer issuing mortgages in high-risk flood areas, multiple media outlets reported this week. That is stoking concerns that similar measures could be taken in other places, including the U.S. According to the Insurance Bureau of Canada, roughly 1.5

Despite the protests of the title insurance industry, Fitch Ratings does not believe the lender title insurance waiver pilot program for certain refinance transactions announced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) on Thursday will have an impact on title insurer ratings.In an emailed statem

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) will be closely scrutinizing what it described as “junk fees” imposed on borrowers when closing a mortgage. Its new priority has provoked strong criticism from the mortgage industry. President Joe Biden announced a housing plan during his 2024 State of

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) this week announced new rules that will require publicly traded companies to disclose climate risks and how much greenhouse gas emissions they produce. But compared with a prior proposed version of the rules from 2022, media outlets have characterized the

Women face a series of challenges that add up to make retirement prospects “pretty bleak,” including issues such as gender pay inequality, longer life spans and a lack of savings based on U.S. Census Bureau data. But Cindy Hounsell, founder and president of the Women’s Institute for a Secure Retirem

Based on the notion that far too many U.S. homeowners are “house-rich, cash-poor,” home equity investment firm Hometap provides clients with a way to tap into their home equity instead of selling their home or taking out a loan.Hometap, as an investor, provides cash in exchange for a share of their

Since the original filing of a lawsuit about the extinguishment of a priority lien tied to the loan portfolio collateral of Reverse Mortgage Funding (RMF), Texas Capital Bank (TCB) has argued in court that it was given verbal assurances from high-ranking officials at Ginnie Mae and the Federal Housi

It was mid-February when clients, family and friends began asking Jason Posnick about strange postcards appearing in their mailboxes. Thanks to Lisa Chinatti, the broker-owner at Chinatti Realty Group, he was not completely caught off guard.“Lisa is super on the pulse. She talks with a lot of people

President Joe Biden entered the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday night, filing past a narrowly divided Congress during an election year and preparing to give a State of the Union address that would feature a relatively substantive focus on housing.“If I were smart, I’d go hom

Steve Harney, founder of Keeping Current Matters and a force in real estate for four decades, died suddenly on Sunday, March 4, at age 68.“As we mourn the loss of Steve, we hold tight to the incredible impact he had on agents, our industry, and the fact that his legacy will live on at Keeping Curren

Sotheby’s International Realty is expanding its footprint in the Golden State. On Thursday, the Anywhere brand announced that Northern California firm Vista Real Estate had joined the Sotheby’s network.The Redding, California-based firm will now operate as Shasta Sotheby’s International Realty. This