Leaders in Akron, a heartland city nearly 40 miles south of Cleveland, hope to shed the city’s “Rust Belt” label and drive its emerging revival by making it easier to build new homes. To achieve the objective, planners believe they’re on the verge of eliminating minimum lot sizes to counteract a shr

Mortgage Forward announced Friday that it has agreed to acquire the third-party origination (TPO) division of First Federal Bank, including QRL Financial, in a deal the companies say will expand Mortgage Forward’s national mortgage lending platform and broaden its product offerings. The companies co

Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.) has introduced federal legislation that would temporarily raise the capital gains tax exclusion to $1 million for senior homeowners who sell their longtime primary residences. The move aims to ease tax burdens on older Americans and free up inventory for younger home

[Image (left to right): Scott Drees, Midwest Regional President, Barbara Drees Jones, VP Marketing, David Drees, Chairman, Alexa Drees Walker, Director of Midwest Design Centers. Drawing: Maggie Goldstone] The resonant image of a German immigrant’s handiwork – a brick Cape Cod house built on a shoes

American Pacific Mortgage (APM) has closed a merger deal to bring Synergy One Lending under its umbrella as a DBA, creating a mortgage production platform with roughly $14 billion in annual volume, the companies announced Friday. The combination of the two California-based lenders aims to scale thei

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is seeking public feedback on whether the Federal Housing Administration (FHA)’s property requirements for single-family homes should be updated to better reflect current market conditions and reduce barriers to homeownership. In a request f

A former employee of the District of Columbia Housing Authority who later became a real estate developer has pleaded guilty to federal charges — stemming from a yearslong scheme to secure millions of dollars in financing from private mortgage lenders. The announcement was made by the office of Jeani

A federal judge in Chicago has extended Zillow’s temporary restraining order against Midwest Real Estate Data (MRED) in the listing portal giant’s antitrust lawsuit against the Chicagoland MLS and Compass International Holdings.  On Thursday morning, Zillow filed a motion to extend its temporary res

Berkshire Hathaway’s planned acquisition of Taylor Morrison has opened the door for us to explore a set of uber-themed questions: about homebuilders’ present and future valuations, leadership and scale, and to the question that public homebuilder boards may now be asking: whether to build toward gre

After spending much of its first decade laying the groundwork for growth, Maryland-based Schaefer Homes emerged as the eighth-fastest-growing homebuilder by residential sales volume in HousingWire’s inaugural HousingWire Homebuilder Rankings.  Jim Schaefer, CEO of Schaefer Homes, founded the company

Affordable housing advocates are warning that proposed reductions to several key U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) programs could make it harder for communities to address persistent affordability challenges and expand housing supply. The National Association of Local Housing Fi

Mortgage lenders are rolling out new credit scoring models, but in the secondary market, investors and credit rating agencies are awaiting additional performance data while developing workarounds to keep loans moving through the system. Susan Hosterman, senior director for North America RMBS and cov

Achieve has expanded its fixed-rate home equity line of credit (HELOC) program, raising the maximum loan amount to $700,000 and lowering its lowest available annual percentage rate to 5.5% for qualified borrowers, the digital personal finance company said Wednesday. The changes, which took effect Ju

The country’s largest reverse mortgage brokerages based on February activity continued to set the pace in March across the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage (HECM) space, according to endorsement data released Thursday by Reverse Market Insight (RMI) and published by HECMWorld.com. The top five broker

Newfi Lending has integrated Prudent AI’s income analysis engine into its broker portal, giving brokers near real-time calculations for non-QM loans and cutting bank-statement turn times from roughly 72 hours to as little as three, the companies announced Wednesday. The new IncomeIQ portal, built on

Two federal lawmakers are urging Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Chairman Andrew Ferguson to investigate the referral practices of online real estate platforms.  In a letter sent to Chairman Ferguson last Friday, Representatives Jennifer McClellan and Donald Beyer, both Democrats from Virginia, claim

Unemployment and foreclosure activity were the primary drivers of housing market risk in the first quarter of 2026, with clusters of vulnerable counties in Florida and California along with safer markets concentrated in Tennessee, according to ATTOM‘s Housing Impact Report released Thursday. ATTOM’s

Better Home & Finance Holding Co. and Coinbase have funded what the companies say is the first Fannie Mae-backed mortgage in the U.S. that uses bitcoin as collateral, marking a new step in the integration of digital assets into mainstream housing finance. The companies announced Thursday that they p

American homeowners are sitting on $17 trillion in equity. The average mortgaged borrower holds $295,000. By any historical standard, these are people with options. And yet, when a $14,000 roof replacement or HVAC failure hits, a growing share of them won’t tap a single dollar of that equity. Borrow

Berkshire Hathaway‘s planned acquisition of No. 6-ranked homebuilder Taylor Morrison begs big follow-on questions. These mostly spring from who this particular buyer is and the moment they have chosen. One way or another, these follow-up questions may prompt homebuilding leaders to revisit a core im