American spending on home improvements and repairs has seen steady growth as the slow housing market has convinced many to stay put and renovate instead. But this growth is expected to slow in the coming year, according to a new report released by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

Co-living startup Starcity announced that it is building two ground-up co-living developments in the Bay Area: one in San Francisco and one in San Jose. Together, the projects will bring 1070 units to the Bay Area.

Nathan (Nat) Hardwick, the former chief executive officer of LandCastle Title and former managing partner of Morris Hardwick Schneider, was found guilty late last week of embezzling more than $25 million from his former companies, bringing an end to a massive scandal that destroyed a prominent real estate firm and left hundreds of people without a job.

Taylor Morrison Home Funding integrated with LodeStar Software Solutions to quickly and accurately quote closing costs on new-home construction properties. Under the new partnership, Taylor Morrison Home Funding employees can obtain quotes instantly through Ellie Mae’s Encompass digital mortgage solution.

Nomura Holding America and several of its affiliates will pay $480 million in a settlement with the Department of Justice over the companies’ mortgage bond activities in the run-up to the financial crisis. The DOJ claimed that Nomura misled investors, which included university endowments, retirement funds, federally insured financial institutions, Fannie Mae, and Freddie Mac, about the quality of the underlying loans between 2006 and 2007.

AFR Wholesale and Floify announced Wednesday both companies shook hands on a partnership, and AFR will now use Floify’s point-of-sale technology. AFR’s goal in partnering with Floify is to reduce origination time and increase broker productivity.

This week, fear of interest rate spikes contributed to a decrease in housing stocks after analysts lowered ratings and price targets for several companies in the housing industry, according to an article written by Jim Bounds for CNBC.

Former Equifax Manager Sudhakar Reddy Bonthu was just sentenced to eight months house arrest following his guilty plea admitting he used non-public information to profit off of the credit reporting agency’s massive data breach. Last year, just before Equifax announced that it had exposed the data of more than 148 million American consumers to hackers, Bonthu bought 86 “put” options in Equifax stock that expired on September 15, 2017, ahead of the subsequent drop in Equifax’s stock value in the wake of the breach.

Last year, the deficit was $666 billion and, at its current rate of growth, it could balloon to over $1 trillion before the next presidential election.

Rumors have long swirled that Amazon has eyes on the mortgage business, but industry leaders say it's unlikely the company will dive in just yet. At MBA's annual convention on Tuesday, Hsieh and Emerson said there's still too much chaos in the space, but predict that fintech is on the verge of changing all that.