• Dovenmuehle Mortgage to lay off several hundred in Illinois

    Dovenmuehle Mortgage to lay off several hundred in Illinois,Flávia Furlan Nunes

    Dovenmuehle Mortgage, a mortgage sub-servicing company, has informed authorities in Illinois that it will impose a layoff affecting hundreds of employees next year. The company has decided to cut 212 jobs in its Lake Zurich site starting on Feb. 16, 2024, per a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notif

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  • Mortgage rates continue trending down before Christmas

    Mortgage rates continue trending down before Christmas,Sarah Marx

    Mortgage rates stayed below 7% for the second week in a row, a welcome relief after a 17-week streak of above-7% rates. This week’s dip is the largest weekly drop since November 2022.The 30-year, fixed mortgage rate averaged 6.67% for the week ending Dec. 21, according to Freddie Mac‘s Primary Mortg

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  • Guaranteed Rate’s Kate Amor on a bespoke tech approach

    Guaranteed Rate’s Kate Amor on a bespoke tech approach,Sarah Wheeler

    HousingWire Editor in Chief Sarah Wheeler sat down with Kathryn Amor, senior vice president and head of enterprise products at Guaranteed Rate, to talk about the intersection of product and technology.Sarah Wheeler: You joined Guaranteed Rate in January of 2023. What drew you to that role?Kathryn Am

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  • First American is the latest cybersecurity attack victim

    First American is the latest cybersecurity attack victim,Brooklee Han

    First American is the latest real estate firm to suffer a cybersecurity incident.Sources told HousingWire the incident occurred Wednesday afternoon, with First American confirming the incident Thursday morning.In a statement on the title company’s website it notes that First American has “taken cert

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  • DOJ and CFPB sue Colony Ridge over predatory lending practices

    DOJ and CFPB sue Colony Ridge over predatory lending practices,Flávia Furlan Nunes

    The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) sued the developer and lender Colony Ridge on Wednesday, alleging the company operated an illegal land sales scheme and made false statements targeting tens of thousands of Hispanic borrowers in Texas. That’s th

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  • Busting VA mortgage loan myths

    Busting VA mortgage loan myths,David Smith

    There’s no higher honor than serving in the United States Military, which I deeply understand as a former Army sergeant. And, like many of my fellow service members, I’ve experienced firsthand the sense of missing out on a significant benefit we’ve rightfully earned protecting our freedoms — the VA

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  • How Americans surfed Zillow in 2023

    How Americans surfed Zillow in 2023,
  • Loan officers are dramatically cutting their pay to win clients. It’s often illegal. 

    Loan officers are dramatically cutting their pay to win clients. It’s often illegal. ,James Kleimann, Flávia Furlan Nunes

    It was late 2022 and Mike was feeling the pressure. Mortgage rates had climbed close to the 7% range and he was determined to remain competitive on pricing with rival loan officers in North Carolina. But there was a problem: pricing exceptions, in which the lender takes the hit, were becoming scarce

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  • Existing home sales lay the path for the 2024 housing market

    Existing home sales lay the path for the 2024 housing market,Logan Mohtashami

    Did today’s existing home sales report give us a playbook for housing in 2024? I would argue yes, and the housing market today looks a lot like what we saw in late 2022. However, this time around, the Federal Reserve rate hike cycle is over, and we don’t need to worry about Fed presidents going on C

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  • Keller Williams announces new executive appointments 

    Keller Williams announces new executive appointments ,Sarah Marx

    Keller Williams (KW) has appointed Wendi Harrelson as president of KWRI-owned regions and John Clidy as vice president of growth, the company announced on Wednesday. The appointments were effective as of Dec. 12.“Well-known across our ecosystem as servant leaders, Wendi and John will act as growth p

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  • Moehrl commission lawsuit defendants file motion for summary judgement

    Moehrl commission lawsuit defendants file motion for summary judgement,Brooklee Han

    The three remaining defendants in the Moehrl commission lawsuit filed a joint motion for summary judgement on Tuesday. The National Association of Realtors, Keller Williams and HomeServices of America, have asked judge Andrea Wood to rule on the suit based on the evidence that has been presented dur

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  • Existing-home sales grew in November after months of declines

    Existing-home sales grew in November after months of declines,Sarah Marx

    Sales of existing-homes inched up in November, breaking a streak of five consecutive monthly declines. While sales are still tracking below last year’s levels, the gap between 2022 and 2023 has narrowed considerably.Existing-home sales grew 0.8% in November from the prior month, reaching a seasonall

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  • Title premium volume in Q3 falls 24% annually

    Title premium volume in Q3 falls 24% annually,Brooklee Han

    Title premium volume continued to drop during the third quarter of 2023, as limited housing supply and high interest rates took their toll on home sales.During the third quarter of 2023, the title industry generated $4.1 billion in title insurance premiums, down 24% year over year, according to the

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  • DataDigest: Did a Fed meeting change everything for 2024?

    DataDigest: Did a Fed meeting change everything for 2024?,Will Robinson

    Last week’s DataDigest offered readers a host of housing forecasts from industry experts at banks, trade associations and more, the thrust of which was housing professionals should expect a modestly better year of sales thanks to retreating mortgage rates in the year to come.A day after publication,

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  • CoreLogic’s income analysis solution now integrated with Fannie Mae’s income calculator

    CoreLogic’s income analysis solution now integrated with Fannie Mae’s income calculator,Sarah Marx

    CoreLogic’s AutomatIQ Borrower Income Analysis solution is now integrated with Fannie Mae’s Income Calculator, the company announced last week.With this integration, mortgage lenders will be able to calculate borrowers’ income according to the standards described in Fannie Mae’s Selling Guide. Lende

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  • 6 strategies to get more from your MLS searches

    6 strategies to get more from your MLS searches,Tim and Julie Harris

    Real estate agents and brokers, are you relying solely on that buyer drip you set up for your motivated and qualified clients? Has the drip run dry? It’s time to get more creative, aggressive and profitable with your MLS searches. Today we’ll show you how to deploy 6 creative ways to get more from y

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  • 2024 will be a better year for real estate recruiting: Relitix

    2024 will be a better year for real estate recruiting: Relitix,Rob Keefe

    After a multi-year decline in agent movement between brokerages, Relitix’s Agent Movement Index suggests that this trend may be reversing. The index shows that, measured on a trailing 12-month basis, the amount of agent recruitment bottomed out in October of 2023 and has begun to increase.“After see

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  • Housing starts flexes single-family muscle

    Housing starts flexes single-family muscle,Logan Mohtashami

    Boom! Housing starts had an epic beat Tuesday, which usually means the data will get revised lower at some point, but one thing is for sure: the housing starts and new home sales sector came to throw shade at the 2023 recession crowd. Many say housing leads the economy into a recession, which has be

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  • Fannie Mae continues to forecast modest downturn in 2024

    Fannie Mae continues to forecast modest downturn in 2024,Sarah Marx

    Even though Jerome Powell announced three rate cuts in 2024, Fannie Mae Economic and Strategic Research (ESR) group continues to forecast a modest downturn in 2024. The group projects a return to growth in 2025.“Last week’s comments by Chairman Powell, as well as the Federal Reserve’s updated Summar

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  • Fidelity facing class action suit after cybersecurity attack

    Fidelity facing class action suit after cybersecurity attack,Brooklee Han

    Big Four title firm Fidelity National Financial and its subsidiary mortgage subservicer Loancare are facing a class action lawsuit alleging that they were negligent with customer data and that they breached their contract, after the firm was the victim of a cyber security attack in late-November.The

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