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RealtyBaron offers Agent Bid widget

By Inman News, Friday, July 31, 2009.

Online real estate site RealtyBaron is offering a widget that allows partner Web sites to offer "find an agent" services through a branded storefront that keeps visitors on their site.

RealtyBaron is a real estate agent rating and review site that also offers an online system in which agents bid for business by adjusting their commission rates and rebates.  more...

Everyone's a critic at Yelp.com

By Inman News, Friday, July 31, 2009.
Jeremy Stoppelman

Everyone's a critic, or so the saying goes.

And that saying is the basis of the business model at Yelp.com, an online community that features user ratings and reviews on a wide range of businesses and professionals -- including real estate brokerages and agents.

In July 2004, former PayPal pals Jeremy Stoppelman and Russel Simmons reunited to launch Yelp.com.  more...

Judge throws out RESPA rule challenge

By , Friday, July 31, 2009.

Unless Congress says otherwise, mortgage brokers will have to disclose rebates paid by lenders and credit them against borrowers' closing costs beginning Jan. 1, following a judge's dismissal of a trade group's lawsuit challenging the new rules.

The ruling clears one potential obstacle to implementation of new loan disclosures and other changes to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) put forward last year by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  more...

Survey: Consumers want added services

By , Friday, July 31, 2009.

Satisfying home buyers and sellers in a tight market increasingly depends on the provision of additional services and products like mortgages, appraisals, inspections and home warranties, according to a study by J.D. Power and Associates.

For its 2009 Home Buyer/Seller Study, J.D. Power surveyed 2,801 people who bought or sold a home between April 2007 and June 2008, gauging customer satisfaction with seven of the largest real estate brokerage franchises.  more...

Timing the real estate transaction

By Inman News, Thursday, July 30, 2009.
Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/3296379139/">wwarby</a>.

George Ayling, founder and real estate broker of Select A Fee Real Estate System in Chicago, said he was skeptical when he first considered a fee-for-service business model. "I just felt it wasn't going to work," he said.

That was in 1995, before he and his real estate agents spent about 1 1/2 years examining the workload involved in everything from the initial client contact to closing.

At the time, "I came up with 12 to 13 hours" (of work) per transaction, Ayling said. The next question he considered: "How much should I charge per hour?"  more...

Foreclosures: not the same old story

By Inman News, Thursday, July 30, 2009.

Some housing markets in areas like Michigan, Ohio and Indiana that have become synonymous with foreclosures saw some relief in first six months of the year, but there was an uptick in filings in other markets not previously considered foreclosure hot spots, data aggregator RealtyTrac said today.

Trends in RealtyTrac's Midyear 2009 Metropolitan Foreclosure Report suggest that unemployment is driving new foreclosure activity more than the continuing effects of subprime and adjustable rate mortgage loans made during the boom, RealtyTrac CEO James Saccacio said in a press release.  more...

Catch it on camera at Real Estate Connect

By Inman News, Wednesday, July 29, 2009.
Flickr photo by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kratz/2695100333/in/set-72157600855940068/">John Kratz</a>.

Inman News columnist and avid photographer Teresa Boardman will lead a photo walk at 4:30 p.m. Aug. 5 in San Francisco for attendees of the Inman News Real Estate Connect conference, which runs from Aug. 5-7.

The photo walk is "a chance for people to grab their cameras, see some sites in beautiful San Francisco, go for a walk, and grab a bite to eat," says Boardman, who has a collection of her photos online at Flickr.com, a photo-sharing site.  more...

IRS eyeing homebuyer tax credit claims

By Inman News, Wednesday, July 29, 2009.

The Internal Revenue Service says a Jacksonville, Fla.-based tax preparer is the first to be succesfuly prosecuted for fraud related to the federal first-time homebuyer tax credit.

James Otto Price III, 47, pled guilty on July 23 to falsely claiming the first-time homebuyer credit on a client’s federal tax return, the IRS said. He faces up to three years in jail and a fine of up to $250,000 when he is sentenced.  more...

Loan workouts up 25% in June

By Inman News, Wednesday, July 29, 2009.

Mortgage servicers participating in the HOPE NOW alliance boosted loan workouts by 25 percent from May to June, helping the number of workouts to exceed foreclosure starts for the month for the first time since April.

More than two out of three of the 310,000 loan workouts accomplished in June were categorized as repayment plans, rather than loan modifications that reduce borrower's payments and are considered less likely to redefault.  more...

Refi demand cools

By Inman News, Wednesday, July 29, 2009.

Demand for purchase mortgages held steady during the week ending July 24, but requests for refinance loans were off 10.9 percent from the week before as mortgage rates inched up, the Mortgage Bankers Association said in releasing the results of its Weekly Applications Survey.

An index measuring application volume for both purchase and refinance loans was down a seasonally adjusted 6.3 percent from the week before.  more...

Servicers prodded to do more loan mods

By Inman News, Wednesday, July 29, 2009.

Loan servicers have committed to "significantly increasing" the rate at which they negotiate loan modifications with homeowners facing foreclosure, the Obama administration said in announcing a new goal of achieving 500,000 trial loan modifications by Nov. 1.  more...

RE/MAX CEO: expect shorter short sales

By Inman News, Wednesday, July 29, 2009.
Margaret M. Kelly

Detroit native Margaret M. Kelly steadily climbed the corporate ranks at RE/MAX after taking a job with the company as a financial analyst in 1987. She stepped into her current role as sole chief executive officer for the global real estate franchise giant in 2005 after serving for a year as co-CEO.  more...

Living with the code

By Inman News, Tuesday, July 28, 2009.
Flickr image by <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinksherbet/3041510366/">D Sharon Pruitt</a>.

The Home Valuation Code of Conduct -- a new set of rules governing appraisals conducted on loans slated for purchase by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that took effect on May 1 -- has been a contentious issue for real estate professionals.

Some industry groups say the new rules, intended to protect appraisers from coercion by lenders, have derailed sales in part because lenders are shifting work appraisal management companies who may employ appraisers with little experience in the markets they are assigned to work in.  more...

'Inflection point' for home prices seen

By Inman News, Tuesday, July 28, 2009.

Two indexes tracking home prices in major markets continue to show double digit annual price declines, but the pace of those declines slowed for the fourth consecutive month during May, Standard & Poor's said.

A clear inflection point has emerged in the rate of annual price declines measured by the S&P-Case-Shiller 10- and 20-City Composites, Standard & Poor's said.

After 16 consecutive months of record annual declines that began in October, 2007, year-over-year price declines appear to have peaked in January, 2009.  more...

Fed may ban loan-originator incentives

By , Tuesday, July 28, 2009.

The Federal Reserve Board is proposing a ban on incentive payments to mortgage originators that are based on a loan's interest rate or other terms, and revisions to loan disclosures provided to consumers that would include factoring in the cost of settlement services such as title insurance.

The Fed says its proposed changes to Truth in Lending Act (TILA) loan disclosure forms would make them more compatible with another set of disclosures mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA).  more...

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