Lender Support Systems Inc. (LSSI), a global provider of lending and loan servicing technology solutions, and Portellus Inc., a software solution provider for the mortgage and insurance industries, announced Thursday that the companies have formed a strategic alliance and successfully integrated their software platforms. The alliance joins Portellus’ origination platform with LSSI’s mortgage closing, servicing [...]

The Illinois Association of Realtors released statewide sales numbers for December and for the full year on Thursday morning. A total of 167,860 home sales were reported in 2006, according to the Association, down 8.9 percent from 184,199 total sales during 2005. The year-end Illinois median sale price was $203,900 in 2006, up just 1.5 [...]

Mortgage rates increased again this week, with the average 30-year fixed rate rising to 6.32 percent. According to Bankrate.com’s weekly national survey of large lenders, the 30-year fixed rate mortgages had an average of 0.34 discount and origination points. The average 15-year fixed rate mortgage popular for refinancing inched to 6.07 percent, while on larger loans, [...]

Millennium Bankshares Corporation today announced it will exit its mortgage banking activities, citing the effects of a soft housing market. “We were concerned about future volatility in earnings as a result of the soft housing market and wanted to eliminate, going forward, the risks normally associated with mortgage banking activities,� said Carroll C. Markley, CEO of [...]

The number of mortgage default notices filed against California homeowners jumped last quarter to the highest level in more than eight years, a real estate information service reported late Wednesday. Lending institutions sent homeowners 37,273 default notices during the October-to-December period. That was up by 36.9 percent from 27,218 the previous quarter, and up 145.3 percent [...]

Editor’s note: this article has been corrected, thanks to feedback from Inman News, who first broke this story. I left the mistake in the article for clarity’s sake. First American recently — and very quietly — agreed to pay more than $10 million in fines to settle charges that it had engaged in illegal kickbacks in [...]

The Associated Press is reporting that Michigan’s regulator is ordering restitution to any borrowers in the state affected by the troubled lender’s sudden shutdown.

Continued deceleration in home price appreciation and decreased affordability caused the risk of home price declines to rise in cities across the country, PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. reported today. PMI U.S. Market Risk Index scores increased for 34 of the nation’s 50 largest MSAs, resulting in an increase in the average score from 328 to [...]

Dow Jones Indexes, Wilshire Associates and Wells Real Estate Funds announced Wednesday the launch of Wells’ newest mutual fund, the first licensed to track the Dow Jones Wilshire Global Real Estate Securities Index. The Wells Dow Jones Wilshire Global RESI Index Fund marks the first time the full Dow Jones Wilshire Global RESI, launched in [...]

BasePoint Analytics, a leading provider of scientific fraud analytics and consulting services, announced Wednesday that it launched FraudMark for Investment Banking, statistical pattern recognition software designed to assess mortgage fraud risk. BasePoint said FraudMark uses sophisticated analytic scoring technology to identify suspicious mortgage loans, enabling investment banks and due diligence firms to score and [...]