Mercantile Bank’s mortgage portfolio grows yet stays below prior levels.
Mercantile’s residential mortgages rose modestly while overall balances remain reduced; commercial lending grew. Private lenders should assess funding gaps.
TransUnion and Bankrate Add Competing Lender Offers to Credit App.
TransUnion and Bankrate integration adds personalized lender offers to Credit Essentials, creating a new borrower-acquisition channel for private lenders.
Fannie Mae Raises Caps on Foreclosure Attorney Fees.
Fannie Mae raises attorney fee caps for foreclosure and bankruptcy and updates servicer access to Do Not Send 1099‑C list—implications for private lenders.
MPF Xtra lenders face escrow reporting change as loan data rules shift.
MPF Xtra lenders must submit escrow events separately to Computershare in Excel, CSV or JSON; loan-delivery updates add appraisal and property fields. Note.
Side’s Google tie-up with HouseCanary may improve listing visibility.
More than 600 Side partners across 19 states can qualify to appear in Google's mobile carousel via My State MLS, increasing visibility for private lenders.
Beeline aims to reduce annual costs by $3 million.
A digital lender is implementing a cost-cutting plan that reduces operating expenses by $250,000 per month while shifting the business toward greater automation and data-driven decisioning. The initiative centers on deploying artificial intelligence across origination, underwriting and servicing to compress cycle times, cut manual [...]
Housing policy overlooked the cost of staying in a home.
A recent survey found that 63.2% of homeowners report significant stress from rising ownership costs, driven primarily by higher property taxes, insurance premiums and routine upkeep. That majority highlights a broad affordability squeeze that is reshaping household budgets: many owners are cutting discretionary spending, [...]
OneKey MLS rejects Compass’s demand concerning public listings.
Compass has launched litigation against CRMLS over whether properties that are publicly marketed outside the multiple listing service must nonetheless be entered into the MLS, challenging entrenched rules on listing dissemination, cooperation and compensation. The dispute probes the legal limits of MLS governance and [...]
Is the industry prepared for increased short sales?
Mortgage servicers are increasingly turning to pre-foreclosure short sales as a front‑line loss mitigation tool to resolve a surging cohort of homeowners who are both underwater and delinquent. Confronted with negative equity and rising delinquencies, servicers favor short sales because they typically shorten resolution [...]
The mortgage industry should measure human attention per loan.
Mortgage lenders often assume that automation and AI will materially lower origination costs, but those outcomes depend on a clear accounting of how much expert attention each loan consumes. Without granular measurement of underwriting judgment, exception handling, pricing overrides and other high-touch activities, AI [...]