By Janis Mara, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. First American Title has agreed to pay $680,000 in a settlement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development over a probe of alleged kickbacks involving sham affiliated business partnerships, HUD said today. HUD claimed First American Title Insurance Co., doing business as Memphis Title Co., made payments through alleged sham affiliated businesses in the Memphis area in violation of anti-kickback and unearned fee provisions of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, known as RESPA. First Ameri more...
By Jessica Swesey, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. A corporation based outside of Philadelphia is suing a Pennsylvania Realtor for allegedly infringing a patent the company holds for using a computer mapping system to locate available real estate properties for sale. A corporation, Real Estate Alliance Ltd., on Tuesday filed a lawsuit in U.S. more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Peter Conti, vice president of research firm Borrell Associates, is no stranger to the world of start-ups and online marketing, with more than 20 years of traditional and Internet start-up experience under his belt. After selling a retail business in late 1996, Conti began work in Richmond, Va., on one of the first e-commerce marketplaces for a 1,000-plus-member local merchants association. He joined Landmark Communications in 1998 to develop and manage the Richmond.com Web site. more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco are the riskiest housing markets in the country, with high probabilities of declines in housing prices over the next two years, according to a list based on the PMI Risk Index. The list considered job growth, population, median income and affordability in identifying the 13 riskiest real estate markets. more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Escalating housing costs have made it difficult for some tenants to pay medical expenses, according to a poll released today by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Twenty-five percent of respondents said that they have had difficulty paying their housing expenses in the past year and 27 percent said their housing costs made it difficult to pay for health care, including medical insurance, the group said. Combined, 32 percent of respondents indicated that they had had at least one of these problems in the past year, and 19 percent indicated they had faced both. more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Home sales in the Twin Cities, Minn., region dipped 4.4 percent in June from a year ago but remained the second-highest month on record over the past six years, the Saint Paul Association of Realtors reported Tuesday. Realtors reported a total of 6,735 home sales in the 13-county metropolitan area in June, down from 7,047 in June 2004. For the first six months of 2005, home sales edged slightly ahead of last year by 0.1 percent. There were 26,412 closed home sales from January '05 through June '05 compared with 26,382 sales during the same period in 2004. more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. The latest annual forecast by the National Association of Realtors calls for an even stronger record year for housing than earlier predicted. Existing-home sales are expected to reach 6.97 million this year, a 2.8 percent gain over last year's record mark of 6.78 million. That's an improvement over last month's projection, which called for 6.89 million existing-home sales this year. more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Overall mortgage applications dropped last week, going down 7.2 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from the week before, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association's weekly survey. "Mortgage application volume is down 7.2 percent from the previous week, with applications for adjustable-rate products experiencing an even steeper decline of 15.8 percent," said Michael Cevarr, MBA's director of member surveys, in a statement. As a result, Cevarr said, the ARM share of applications, at 27.9 percent, is at its lowest level since March of 2004. more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. A survey of about 150 real estate companies, conducted by a corporate advisory firm, found a strong demand for new residential real estate workers in the Southeast and Midwest United States. "Commercial mortgage sector hiring is strongest in the Northeast; commercial ownership/services firms are most active on the West Coast, and single-family residential firms are experiencing the most activity in the Southeast and Midwest," reported FPL Advisory Group, which provides corporate and managerial advisory services to the real more...
By Inman News, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Long-term mortgage interest rates were flat Tuesday, and the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond yield edged up to 4.14 percent. The 30-year fixed-rate average remained at 5.24 percent, and the 15-year fixed-rate dipped slightly to 4.82 percent. The 1-year adjustable was down at 3.72 percent. The 30-year Treasury bond yield climbed to 4.38 percent. Rates are current as of 7:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. more...
By Glenn Roberts Jr., Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Real estate is going Hollywood. ABC has "Hot Properties," a show about four women working in a Manhattan real estate office. more...
By Jessica Swesey, Tuesday, July 12, 2005. Editor's note: In this four-part series, Inman News looks at real estate security in the Internet era. It's no longer just a matter of keeping clients' home keys in a safe place. The Web has opened up vulnerabilities to data scraping, and new responsibilities for consumer privacy, MLS passwords and lockbox pass codes. more...
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