Mortgage payments rose in April, but so did incomes

With mortgage rates still in the mid 6% range, borrowers who received mortgages in April 2023 paid an average of $2,343 a month, up 28% from a year prior. That’s according to the latest origination data from mortgage tech firm Candor Technology. Per data from Candor’s underwriting engine, the average

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Opinion: I beat the market with a mortgage assumption

I was tired of fighting with mortgage lenders about self-employment income, high-interest rates, and dealing with scarce inventory that fit our family’s needs. We decided to rent a bigger home. I was beyond done. It wasn’t meant to be. The awards for entrepreneurship did not extend to quickly buying a

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Title insurance premium volume drops by 38% in Q4 2022

The rapid housing market cool down and the rapid pace at which the Federal Reserve hiked interest rates took their toll on the title insurance industry in 2022. Last year, the industry generated $21 billion in title insurance premiums, down 16% from 2020, according to the American Land Title Association’s

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The BIG Point of Sale integrates with ICE Mortgage Technology

Fintech software and hardware company Mortgage Automation Technologies, Inc. announced on Monday that it has integrated its next-generation point of sale system, The BIG Point of Sale, on the latest API Platform available through ICE Mortgage Technology, a division of Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. The goal was to create a configurable

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Housing Market Tracker: Spring inventory falls

Just when I thought it was safe to say we were getting more traditional spring housing inventory , we hit a snag last week, as active inventory and new listings declined. Hopefully, this is just a blip, which can occur from time to time with weekly data. We had a

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Exclusive: FHFA interview about LLPA changes

In January, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) made a series of significant changes to loan level pricing adjustment (LLPA) fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on conventional/conforming mortgages. Although they went largely under the radar at the time, they ultimately caused an uproar among consumers, the mortgage

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Jobs data shows the labor market is normalizing

Is the labor market finally normalizing? Jobs Friday data came in as a beat of estimates, but the labor market is clearly starting to come back to earth, killing the fear of 1970s wage spiral inflation. We’ve had a good week’s worth of data to show that the Federal Reserve

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Optimal Blue PPE adds investor content from 54 state-based HFAs

Optimal Blue, a division of Black Knight, Inc., announced on Thursday that the Optimal Blue product, pricing and eligibility engine (PPE) has added investor content from 54 state-based housing finance agencies (HFAs). HFAs provide affordable homeownership options to low- and moderate-income borrowers through down payment and closing cost assistance, as

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