Agent blog portal launches

There is power in numbers.

A group of Coldwell Banker real estate agents in Northern California is applying that notion to blogging with the launch of a Web site that pulls each agent's blog postings into a searchable hub for consumers to find information.

Homescopes.com, which launched this week, aims to provide daily commentary on cities in the San Francisco Bay Area and Sonoma County written by a group of local Coldwell Banker real estate agents.  more...

Mortgage bankers take $50 hit on each loan originated in 2006

Mortgage bankers lost an average of $50 for each loan they originated in 2006, as they failed to cut costs and match staffing to match declining originations, a new study by the Mortgage Bankers Association reveals.

The MBA's annual cost study, which surveys of a sample of 189 mortgage banking companies, said production profits plummeted from $1,272 per loan in 2003 to $258 in 2005, before dipping into negative territory last year.  more...

NAR: Existing-home sales to fall 10.8% in 2007

The National Association of Realtors expects sales of previously owned homes to fall 10.8 percent this year compared to last year, and for prices to fall 1.3 percent, according to the group's latest annual forecast.

The Realtor group's forecast, prepared by Lawrence Yun, its senior economist, also anticipates a 27.1 percent drop in housing starts for single-family units, a 24 percent overall drop in housing starts, a 23.5 percent decline in new single-family  more...

Countrywide offers Web-based closings on refis, HELOCs

Borrowers who refinance or take out home equity loans from Countrywide Financial Corp. can conduct closings from any location with Internet access, now that the lender has licensed RealEC Technologies Inc.'s Web-based closing platform.

RealEC announced today that Countrywide has integrated its Web-based closing service into its TS2 settlement services platform, which uses the RealEC Collaborative Network Platform.  more...

Home loan apps up in latest survey

Home loan applications picked up last week despite an increase in long-term mortgage rates, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported today.

The market composite index, a measure of total mortgage application volume, last week rose 2.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from the final week of September, according to MBA. The index that tracks refinancings posted the strongest growth, at 2.7 percent, followed by the purchase-loan index, which gained 2.1 percent from the previous week.  more...

Sherry Chris to lead Better Homes and Gardens franchise

Sherry Chris, a much-traveled real estate executive who has served in leading roles for major U.S.  more...

Overnight real estate rates mostly flat

Long-term mortgage interest rates barely moved Tuesday, and the benchmark 10-year Treasury bond yield rose to 4.65 percent.

The 30-year fixed-rate average held at 6.09 percent, and the 15-year fixed rate dipped to 5.71 percent. The 1-year adjustable dropped to 5.73 percent.

The 30-year Treasury bond yield was down at 4.86 percent.

Rates and bonds are current as of 7:15 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.  more...

Thornburg Mortgage ups Q3 loss to $1.1 billion

Thornburg Mortgage Inc. said Tuesday that its third-quarter losses on sales of securities backed by adjustable-rate mortgages totaled $1.099 billion, $236 million more than previous estimates.  more...