Four out of the nation’s five largest servicers — Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo — are failing to comply with servicing rules set forth in the $25 billion national mortgage settlement reached last year, according to a report released Wednesday by Joseph A. Smith, Jr., the settlement’s court-appointed monitor.

Smith’s office used 29 metrics to test how well the five servicers were following the settlement’s 304 servicing standards. Citigroup fared the worst, getting failing marks for three metrics, followed by Bank of America and Chase with two failing marks, and Wells Fargo with one failing mark. Only ResCap, formerly Ally Financial, passed all metrics.

The most common problem among the servicers, particularly Citigroup, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, was the failure to notify homeowners of any missing documents in their loan modification requests within five days of receipt, the Washington Post reported. Citigroup and Bank of America were also cited for providing inaccurate information to borrowers before initiating a foreclosure, the paper said.

“These results demonstrate that the Settlement is allowing us to uncover areas in which more work needs to be done. The banks are now working to correct these errors and will be tested again to determine their level of improvement,” Smith said in a statement.

Source: Office of Mortgage Settlement Oversight

The Federal Reserve may taper its $85 billion-a-month Treasury and mortgage-backed securities habit later this year and wind those purchases down altogether by mid-2014 if the economy keeps chugging along, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke said today — news that sent bond prices plummeting and yields soaring. But Bernanke said the Fed will likely hold onto the mortgage securities it’s purchased so far, which should keep mortgage rates from rising too quickly. Source: federalreserve.gov.

A federal district judge has dismissed antitrust claims filed by the operator of real estate listing portal and agent ratings website NeighborCity.com against the National Association of Realtors and Mid-Atlantic multiple listing service Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc. (MRIS).

NeighborCity.com’s operator, American Home Realty Network, filed the antitrust suit in September 2012, in response to a copyright infringement suit filed by MRIS in March 2012.

In that lawsuit, MRIS claimed NeighborCity.com provides “unauthorized access to and use of” copyrighted MRIS data to support the company’s referral business. Last year NeighborCity began displaying updated agent profile pages with agent scores and performance metrics based on agents’ transaction history. NeighborCity says it obtains some, but not all, of its listings data from brokerages.

St. Paul, Minn.-based Regional Multiple Listing Service of Minnesota Inc. (NorthstarMLS) filed a separate suit against American Home Realty Network, which does business as NeighborCity.com, in April 2012.

NeighborCity’s counterclaim against MRIS and NAR included seven counts, all of which were dismissed by the court on June 10. However, NeighborCity will have until next week to amend three of the seven dismissed counts and resubmit them for reconsideration. If it does not, the company will not be allowed to refile its case.

In dismissing the counts, Judge Alexander Williams Jr. said the court had “serious reservations about AHRN’s ability to set forth a cognizable (antitrust) claim against either” NAR or MRIS, but recognized that some allegations proposed by AHRN “may be relevant” to its claims and it would therefore grant the company the opportunity to file amended counterclaims.

In April, NeighborCity filed an amended counterclaim against NorthstarMLS and added HomeServices of America Inc. and its subsidiary, Edina Realty Inc., as defendants to the suit, alleging antitrust violations.

At NAR’s midyear meeting last month, the trade group agreed to contribute $135,000 to RMLS’s suit against NeighborCity.

In March, another HomeServices of America subsidiary, Winston-Salem, N.C.-based Preferred Carolinas Realty Inc., became the first brokerage to file a copyright infringement suit against NeighborCity. The suit claims NeighborCity is “unlawfully copying and displaying thousands of real estate listings and photographs on its website, including those owned and copyrighted by Preferred Carolinas Realty Inc.”

Last month, NeighborCity filed an answer to the suit, claiming, among other defenses, that agreements with the brokerage’s own agents say that the brokerage has given its consent for its listings to be displayed on NeighborCity.com.

Also last month, the Key West Association of Realtors Inc. (KWAR) was awarded $2.7 million by a federal district court for a copyright suit it brought against an individual who ran websites, including KeyWestMLS.com, with unlicensed data, content and images from a multiple listing service (MLS) maintained by KWAR.

The judge in the case said he set the penalty high to deter others from illegally using MLS-copyrighted content.

David Wilfert knows hosting events like community garage sales is a time-tested way to scoop up clients.

But the broker, an associate at the Wilfert Group, decided he wanted to take a fresh angle on community get-togethers that turn up leads.

That’s how he hatched the idea of hosting a “Shredding Day and Food Drive,” an event that brings community members together to jointly shred sensitive documents and contribute food donations for the needy.

Building on the success of that event, Wilfert (@DavidSWilfer) will add a new twist, and host a “Feast and Feed” that replaces the incessant blare of the shredding machine with delicious food, making it easier to mingle with prospective clients. The idea clinched this week’s #madREskillz mantle for Wilfert.

The event, which Wilfert is now in the preliminary stages of organizing, will double as a barbecue and food drive, with local vendors supplying burgers, hot dogs and other delectables, and attendees dropping off food for the needy.

As with Shredding Day and Food Drive, Second Harvest Food Bank (SHFB) of Orange County could back the event, distributing donations to low-income families across Orange County, Wilfert said.

“Barbecue, socializing and donations for a good cause … what could be better?” Wilfert said.

Wilfert intends to promote Feast and Feed by distributing fliers and post cards, and calling on the help of local community organizers, family and friends.

“Anyone and everyone turns up at these events — residents, vendors and passersby. No one is turned away,” he said. “SHFB can use all the help they can get, and I enjoy giving back to the community in which I work and live.”

Wilfert said that in his experience, pounding the pavement bears a lot of fruit when it comes to generating new marketing ideas.

“Most of my marketing events come from my time in the field, as I am farming, canvassing different communities, speaking with residents and thinking of the greater community,” he said.

In the not-so-distant past, multiple listing services were all about providing member brokers with access to information about each other’s listings, and to make offers of compensation to cooperating brokers and agents who could bring a buyer to a sale.

Today, MLSs are trying to add value and generate new revenue by providing software and services to members — including operating public-facing websites. Some brokers want to go back to the way it was, when MLSs stayed out of their business.

Industry leaders will explore whether there’s a middle ground during a Thursday, July 11 panel discussion at Real Estate Connect San Francisco.

Participating in the panel, “Ending the Broker/MLS Standoff,” will be Rebecca Jensen, president and CEO, UtahRealEstate.com MLS; Curt Beardsley, vice president of business development, Move Inc.; Helen Hanna Casey, president, Howard Hanna Real Estate Services; Lanny Baker, CEO, Zip Realty; Marilyn Wilson, partner, WAV Group; and David Charron, president and CEO, MRIS.

Rebecca Jensen

Curt Beardsley

Helen Hanna Casey

Lanny Baker

Marilyn Wilson

David Charron

See more of what’s on the agenda at Real Estate Connect San Francisco, which takes place July 10-12 at the Hilton Union Square.

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“Predictive analytics is becoming the defining technology of the early 21st century,” claims San Jose, Calif.-based predictive analytics and decision management software company FICO.

FICO — perhaps best known for its credit-scoring algorithms — makes a case for that bold claim in an infographic showing sales of analytics software growing from $11 billion to $35 billion between 2000 and 2012; a “15,000 percent” jump in the number of people employed as “data scientists”; and that 2.5 quintillion bytes of “big data” are created each day, “enabling analytics to become more insightful, precise and predictive than at any point in history.” Source: fairisaac.com.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be wound down and their securitization activities spun out into a new platform overseen by a new, FDIC-like federal agency, according to a bipartisan report by Moody’s Analytics Chief Economist Mark Zandi and former government officials.

The report envisions that mortgage-backed securities (MBS) would be insured by private firms that would not have the backing of the federal government, but which would be subject to federal regulation — much as insured banks and other depository institutions are today. MBS insurers would purchase catastrophic secondary insurance from the government, paying a guarantee fee. The government would ensure that MBS investors were paid if insurers became insolvent, but the MBS insurers themselves would be allowed to fail. Source: economy.com.

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Two Joplin, Mo., Realtors may have saved the lives of a family of three by alerting them that their house was on fire. Bonnie Wright and Susi Yost, Realtors with Pro 100, were touring properties when they noticed white smoke coming from a house. A closer investigation revealed smoke coming from the home’s dryer vent. The two Realtors alerted the family inside and helped them evacuate the home before it suffered serious smoke and fire damage. Source: ozarksfirst.com.

Facebook groups can teach us a lot. If used right, they work as a constant reminder of all of our important relationships we have, old and new.

Earlier this week, I happened to catch a conversation happening in a Facebook group that Real Estate Connect ambassador Dane Briggs runs for real estate agents in Arizona. A member of the group had sparked a conversation with one simple question:

If you could give a new agent one piece of advice, what would it be?

There were suggestions all over the spectrum. Perhaps you should find a new career. Maybe you should seek out a great mentor or broker. Or maybe it’s something as simple as answering your phone. One, simple question opened up a whole sphere of almost 1,500 people to take notice and contribute to the conversation.

It’s not where the conversation is happening, it’s what you’re doing with the groups. Ultimately, you get out of it what you put into it.

5 ways Facebook groups can work for you

1. Use the new Graph Search to find Facebook groups based on your interests.
2. Facebook groups enable you to make connections and “meet” new people before events so you can jump into the important stuff when you meet in real life.
3. Specific Facebook groups like the Evernote for Real Estate group or Tech Support for Real Estate Agents can work as an instant problem-solving hub.
4. Looking for a place to bounce off a marketing idea? Maybe you need some guidance after hours about a contract you’re working on. Your reliable Facebook group peers are a quick way to get some feedback.
5. Facebook groups are a great place to keep visiting long after an event is over. Keep in touch with your new contacts and friends you made — you may even stumble upon a lead or two.

What social media networks/groups do you find the most resourceful and worth your time? 

Trulia has released a consumer-facing rentals iPad app to join the Android phone, tablet and iPhone versions already available, the San Francisco-based firm announced today.

The new app, which focuses solely on rentals, features a rental price heat map that allows users across the U.S. to view prices on a block-by-block basis. That feature was already available on the firm’s Android rental apps. Now the iPhone and iPad versions have it, too.

Trulia, which started carrying rental listings on its site in 2010, aggregates rental listing prices from hundreds of rental listings providers to make the rental price heat map, said Sol Garger, senior product manager of Trulia’s rentals division.

The price heat map feature joins the firm’s crime heat map and the new earthquake and flood susceptibility heat maps, introduced last month, available to consumers looking for information about a specific neighborhood or region.

Last month, realtor.com released a suite of iOS and Android rental apps.

Landlords, too, are seeing new tools crop up. Last week saw the launch of Cozy, a property management tool for small-scale landlords. Other sites, like Zumper, Pendo Rent and Lovely, are building momentum in the space.

Same-sex couples looking to rent homes are more likely to experience unfavorable treatment than heterosexual couples, according to a study commissioned by the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

The study — the first to examine housing discrimination against same-sex couples in the rental market — was based on nearly 7,000 email tests conducted across 50 metropolitan markets between June and October of 2011.

The study found that housing providers favored heterosexual couples over gay male couples in 15.9 percent of tests, and favored heterosexual couples over lesbian couples in 15.6 percent of tests.

“As this study shows, we need to continue our efforts to ensure that everyone is treated the same when it comes to finding a home to call their own, regardless of their sexual orientation,” HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said in a statement.

For each test, two emails, one purportedly from a same-sex couple and the other from a heterosexual couple, were sent to a housing provider to inquire about an advertised rental unit.

The investigation measured unfavorable treatment based on whether a tester was told the unit was available, asked to contact the landlord, invited to see the apartment, or received a response at all.

Currently, only 20 states offer explicit protection against housing discrimination to members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) community. The Fair Housing Act, a federal anti-discrimination law, prohibits discriminating against people on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, disability and familial status, but does not provide the same protection to the LGBT community.

“This study serves as evidence that there is a dire need to include protections for the LGBT community in the federal Fair Housing Act,” said Shanna L. Smith, president of the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA), in a statement. “More enforcement of these laws is also necessary as discrimination continues at high rates even in states that have these protections for the LGBT community.

As The Huffington Post reported, the Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) Act, a bill that has not yet been introduced in the 113th Congress, would beef up the Fair Housing Act by adding add sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status and source of income to prohibitions against discrimination on the basis of gender, marital status and source of income.

The study comes on the heels of another released by HUD last week that provided evidence of persistent housing discrimination against minorities.

While minorities are less likely to encounter flagrant discrimination when house or apartment hunting than they once were, they are still told about and shown fewer housing units than whites, the study found.

Do you think the Fair Housing Act should be strengthened by adding protections for members of the LGBT community? 

Like many landlords, Copperwood Real Estate used to struggle to efficiently manage and distribute its listings.

To populate its public-facing site, it would have to convert listing information that it maintained in a spreadsheet into code and insert that code into its site’s content management system. And to distribute its listings to its broker network, it would have to separately transplant much of the same data into email blasts, said Kevin Murphy, Copperwood’s director of asset management.

“They would write it all down, type it all out,” Murphy said of a vendor who created the blasts for Copperwood’s broker network. “It wasn’t consistent and it didn’t look great.”

But a new service that the company adopted about six months ago has changed all of that, he said.

Nestio Listings, which Nestio unveiled to the public today, equipped Copperwood with an internal listing management system that has enabled it to seamlessly update its listings, display those listings on a public-facing website and disseminate them to the company’s roster of preferred brokers, Murphy said.

Marking Nestio’s expansion from a consumer service into the business side of rentals, Nestio Listings offers landlords and property managers a much-desired solution to the touch-and-go, sometimes chaotic business of managing listings, while providing a reliable stream of accurate listings to brokers accustomed to email blasts often riddled with inaccurate listing information, said Nestio CEO Caren Maio.

But the product’s contribution to the rental marketplace may not end there. Its functionality and steady growth could very well provide it with the infrastructure to support a platform for the rental market that would resemble an MLS.

“We’re not mandating anyone using it,” Maio said. “But, ultimately, we’re trying to create a system that solves real problems.”

So far, Nestio has quietly put its software in the hands of 15 percent of New York City’s landlords, whose listings reach about 50 percent of the city’s brokers, Maio said.

The service enables users to enter information into an internal dashboard, including the unit’s address, layout, rent amount, status (available, pending or occupied), notes, scheduled open houses, and more.

Landlords may also view how long a listing has been vacant or a deal has been pending, a feature that the company added in response to feedback from landlords, Maio said. And its notification system enables employees to instantly update each other on changes in a company’s portfolio.

In addition, Nestio Listings automatically transplants listings marked as available in a landlord or property manager’s internal system into customized PDFs that it fires out in email blasts, simplifying what was once a painstaking process, according to Maio.

And it also powers a landlord’s public-facing listing site, constantly refreshing its listing information based on updates made by the landlord in its internal system.

Screen shot of Copperwood Real Estate’s Nestio-powered listing site.

“We have a dashboard that the leasing manager updates, those listings go out to brokers and they will automatically always be live on our website,” Murphy said.

Todd Jacobs, founder of broker Bold New York, said he appreciates the clean formatting and reliability of the Nestio-generated email blasts.

“When we get this email we know this email is real-time information,” Jacobs said. “For my agents not having … to call [a landlord] and actually get the one person on the phone who knows what’s going on there. It’s extremely valuable,” he said.

Jacobs noted that Nestio’s functionality and growing coverage of NYC listings also seems to lay the groundwork for a rental platform that might look something like an MLS.

“They could almost revolutionize an MLS,” Jacobs said. “I guess this is one of the closer things to it.”

The potential for Nestio to transition its portfolios of listings into a private listing service that allows brokers to see up-to-date listings and communicate with landlords is not lost on Maio.

Nestio is currently working on a paid listing service that would enable brokers to sign in and see the available up-to-date listings of the landlords they work with.

Zillow already offers rental directories in New York, Boston, Chicago and Miami that a spokesperson said allows landlords to share listings in real time with brokers who pay for access to the directories.

But since Zillow’s directory is not directly connected to landlords’ listing management dashboards, the listings aren’t real-time, Maio said. In contrast, a platform that Nestio might build would offer real-time listings, since they would reflect listing information in landlords’ dashboards.

“By focusing on a full end-to-end solution for landlords first, we’ve captured a larger market share of live information than any of the closest comparable services,” Maio said.

At any rate, Maio said that any MLS-like platform will be in “beta for quite a while.”

“With regard to opening up landlord listings to share with all brokers, we’re going to let our landlords drive that,” Maio said. “This could be something we handle in the future on a case-by-case basis.”

Marc Mezvinsky, the husband of Chelsea Clinton, has put the couple’s NYC home on the market for $4.48 million, The Real Deal reported.

The pair is apparently trading up: They reportedly purchased a $10.5 million apartment across from Madison Square Park in February. Source: The Real Deal via the New York Post.

As interest rates continued to climb, applications for purchase loans for the week ending June 14 slipped a seasonally adjusted 3 percent from a week earlier, but were up 12 percent from the same week last year, according to the results of the latest Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey.

Meanwhile, applications for refinance loans decreased 3 percent on a weekly basis, the MBA said.

The MBA also reported that rates on 30-year-fixed-rate mortgages with loan balances of $417,500 or less hit their highest rate since March 2012, increasing to 4.17 percent last week from 4.15 percent a week earlier.

That marked the sixth straight weekly increase. Source: MBA

Two leading Solano County, Calif., brokerages have merged and affiliated with franchisor Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC.

The merger of Vacaville-based Kappel & Kappel Realty Inc. with Solano Gateway Realty Inc. in Fairfield beefs up Coldwell Banker’s presence along the Interstate 80 corridor between San Francisco and Sacramento.

The newly formed Coldwell Banker Kappel Gateway Realty has more more than 200 agents working out of seven offices, including nearly 30 agents from the former Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage offices in Vacaville and Dixon.

The new brokerage’s ownership group includes Steve and Sue Kappel, owners of Kappel & Kappel, and Solano Gateway owners Steve Spencer and Bev Dorsett. Together, the two brokerages had more than $600 million in sales volume in 2012, the companies said.

“We have enjoyed a three-decade-long friendly competition with Steve and Sue, and we have always admired their company’s success,” Spencer said in a statement. “Together we realized that our operations would be best served by a merger. We are thrilled to retain our local ownership while adding the resources, global network and marketing power that our affiliation with Coldwell Banker will provide for our agents and our customers.”

Coldwell Banker Real Estate President and CEO Budge Huskey called the ownership group at Coldwell Banker Kappel Gateway Realty “impressive” and said the franchisor was “thrilled to welcome them and their agents to the Coldwell Banker brand.”

What will the real estate industry look like five years from now, and how can brokers and agents prepare for it?

Leaders of four companies that have been at the forefront of change — Redfin, Trulia, Zillow and Move Inc. — will share their insights at a July 10 panel at Real Estate Connect San Francisco.

“The Industry Destiny: Imagine Your Industry in 2018,” will feature Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman, Trulia co-founder and CEO Pete Flint, Zillow COO Greg Schwartz, and Move CEO Steve Berkowitz. Morgan Brennan, senior real estate reporter for Forbes Media, will moderate the discussion.

Glenn Kelman

Pete Flint

Greg Schwartz

Steve Berkowitz

See more of what’s on the agenda at Real Estate Connect San Francisco, which takes place July 10-12 at the Hilton Union Square.

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Floored, which creates interactive 3-D floor plans that allow users to walk through a virtual recreation of an actual space, was voted the best real estate tech startup today at the Realogy FWD Innovation Summit, hosted at the real estate franchisor’s Madison, N.J., headquarters.

The company took home a prize of $25,000 after attendees voted it the best real estate tech startup among three finalists that were chosen out of 15 startups that presented at the event. Selected by a panel of judges, the three finalists were: Floored, HomeZada and BuyerMLS.

Floored staff members create 3-D models by scanning spaces with a proprietary 3-D camera, using algorithms and manual tweaks to smooth the data. The resulting interactive 3-D model can be made available and shared online.

HomeZada was voted the second best startup, followed by Buyer MLS.

Realogy CEO Alex Perriello said today that the event’s purpose was to ask: ”How can we incorporate some of these, test things, or try things in a real-life situation with brokers and agents?”

The 15 startups that presented at the event were chosen from nearly 100 applicants. Realogy owns major real estate brands including Coldwell Banker, The Corcoran Group and Sotheby’s International Realty.

The 15 startups that presented at the event were: MyCityWay, Realty Mogul, StreetAdvisor, Storefront, Floored, BuyerMLS, HomeLight, Lumentus Social, Onvedeo, Keyzio, Updater, Relocality, Planwise, RealScout and HomeZada.

Realtor.com operator Move Inc. has renewed a content-sharing agreement with MSN that allows consumers to access Move’s property listings and related information from MSN Real Estate, the sixth-most popular real estate site in the U.S.

Under the agreement, Move will continue to power MSN Real Estate’s listings from a variety of databases — existing homes for sale from realtor.com, new homes and rentals from Move.com — and the two firms will share editorial content related to homebuying and renting. MSN Real Estate gets foreclosures from foreclosure.com, which is not a Move property.

MSN Real Estate had 7.1 million visits from desktop computers in the U.S. in May, representing 1.56 percent of all real estate-related Web traffic that month, according to data from Experian Marketing Services.

“We know that Microsoft had a number of choices in online … partners and are pleased to announce our continued long-standing relationship with MSN to deliver the most accurate and trusted real estate information to the MSN community,” said Barbara O’Connor, executive vice president of marketing for Move, in a statement.

“In a nutshell, what Barb is saying, is Move Inc. won the business from Zillow,” wrote Greg Robertson, an industry insider who runs the real estate software firm W&R Studios, on his blog at Vendor Alley.

Zillow has a similar arrangement with Yahoo’s real estate site Yahoo Homes, the fourth-most visited real estate-related website in the U.S. in May with 24 million hits representing a 5.24 percent Web market share, according to data from Experian.

Taken together, the “Yahoo-Zillow Real Estate network” accounted for 17.66 percent of U.S. Web traffic from desktop computers to real estate sites in May, according to Experian data.

Move has a similar network. In addition to powering listings at MSN Real Estate, the San Jose, Calif.-based firm syndicates a separate set of listings to AOL Real Estate through its ListHub subsidiary. Desktop Web traffic to Move’s network accounted for 8.32 percent of all real estate-related visits in the U.S. in May, according to Experian data.

Move and Microsoft last renewed their content-sharing agreement in 2010. According to Move, the agreement dates back seven years. According to Inman News’ archives, MSN and Move predecessor Homestore signed an agreement in 2003 that was renewed in 2007.

Editor’s note: A previous version of this story indicated that foreclosure.com was a Move Inc. property, which is not the case.