The fourth quarter of 2011 was a productive period for multifamily originations, which increased by 31 percent year-over-year according to the latest research by the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA). Pooled with other loan offerings, including industrial property loans, retail

The Obama White House released its latest Housing Scorecard yesterday, and the report provides a sweeping view of many of the various components of the housing market, from sales, to refinancing to inventories. Developed and released by the Department

The construction of South Acres Ranch II,  located in the Sunnyside community of Houston, is set to start next month. Residents of the Sunnyside area and South Acres Ranch I are happy about the new condominium that is being

The National Association of Home Builders/First American Improving Markets Index added 29 more metropolitan areas to its ever-expanding Improving Markets Index (IMI), a specially-crafted survey of the nation’s best-performing urban areas. Now representing 36 states, the IMI has grown exponentially

The PMI Group, the embattled mortgage insurer, granted Fannie Mae mortgage servicers with short sale rights late last week, a measure that allows further access to the pre-foreclosure sales strategy. Typically, a mortgage insurance company must approve short sales

It’s no secret that underwriting standards at banks made an about-face following the market scares of 2008, and that some agents have experienced difficulties selling homes in the new lending environment. A new development, though, would undoubtedly be the loosening of

A new survey from John Burns Real Estate Consulting has ranked some of the top-selling Master Planned Communities (MPC) in the U.S., and Houston was extremely well-represented in the survey’s findings. In total, 11 communities in and around Houston

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner announced on Thursday that the Obama administration is still hard at work on an extensive financial plan to overhaul Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two government-sponsored entities that have received more than $151

Just three weeks after word leaked that the Treasury Department, in conjunction with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), would be launching an REO conversion program to sell its 250,000 distressed properties to investors as rentals, the FHFA has

CoreLogic yesterday released its Home Price Index (HPI) for December, a survey of not only the pricing data for December but of the entire 2011 home value landscape. Including distressed sales, the HPI reports a 4.7 percent decline in

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has dramatically reduced the projected costs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to taxpayers in its latest estimations. According to a HousingWire piece on the latest CBO Budget and Economic Outlook report, taxpayers can

The Obama White House yesterday offered details of its mortgage refinancing plan, an initiative first announced during the president’s State of the Union Address, claiming it could save homeowners an average of $3,000 a

Construction spending in the U.S. finished 2011 in a strong way, with December’s $816.4 billion annual rate the highest for spending in four months, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. A 1.5 percent increase from

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) received 2,300 mortgage complaints in the month of December, and 38 percent of them pertained to loan modifications and foreclosures; and according to recent reports, those complaints do not go unanswered. The CFPB has received in

Home values continued their downward slide with Tuesday’s Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the survey of home values by Standard & Poor’s that is considered the definitive voice on home prices. With a monthly decline of 1.3 percent and a yearly fall

The Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) provision in the Dodd-Frank bill is unquestionably the most controversial aspect of the legislation’s housing-related rulings, and since the start of 2012, eyes have been fixed on the fledgling Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), the agency