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Less than a decade ago, vendor management companies (VMC) were the chief middle man in the industry — the guys that bridged the gap from the lender to the settlement service providers across the country. VMCs had their detractors, but they filled a significant need in the industry at a time of booming growth.

“As I knew VMCs, they were usually in the form of managed networks of independent agents,” said Vincent Danzi, general counsel at Equity Settlement Services. He said VMCs allowed his company to obtain title exam and closing services in places where they had not previously done much business. “I would almost describe them more as vendor roster companies, rather than vendor management companies.”

And then the mortgage world turned upside down. Companies were bought and sold or disappeared altogether. The term VMC, as many had come to know it, took on a different meaning, as market demands altered the range and scope of the VMC work product.

All good things must come to an end

Those in the industry point to the middle ’90s to early 2000s as the heyday of the VMC concept. Lenders started to grow bigger, consolidated and centralized their operations, and likewise, the title industry needed to adapt. Companies like ServiceLink, LSI and ATM started working with lenders to manage booming volumes of work and placing those orders with thousands of agents and abstractors in the field.

“I think there was enough business that everyone was served by [the VMC model] 10 to 12 years ago,” said Ed Krug, manager and general counsel at Commercial Loan Services, and the current president of the Title/Appraisal Vendor Management Association (TAVMA). “There was so much work that a lending institution would have to go beyond the typical four or five VMCs and maybe have 10 or 11 providers for that much volume.”

Then the economy tanked, taking several VMCs with it. Those that remained were largely gobbled up by bigger players looking for economies of scale. The biggest players in the VMC world now are those owned by lending institutions or underwriters.

The latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association showed an increase in mortgage applications from the week prior, driven mostly by refinance activity. Read on for the complete report.

As part of an upcoming feature on the evolving world of vendor management and settlement service companies, The Title Report spoke with the president and chief executive officer of Hollerbach & Associates to get the perspective of someone who has worked with the various incarnations of vendor managers in the industry and, in a way, operates as his own, smaller scale vendor manager. This is just a tiny sneak peek of the in-depth feature coming in the next few weeks.

The president and chief executive officer of a title agency located in the state of Washington — and an industry veteran of nearly 40 years — made the decision to retire. Read on for more about the announcement, including who is next to lead the company.

The list of housing markets showing measurable improvement expanded by 29 metros in February to include a total of 98 entries. Thirty-six states are now represented by at least one market on the Improving Markets Index (IMI) from the National Association of Home Builders and First American. Read on to see all of the latest improving markets.

The January edition of the Obama Administration's Housing Scorecard, released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of the Treasury shows a still-fragile market with a mixed outlook. Read on for the full report.

Fidelity National Financial Inc. has made another acquisition play this week, but on its restaurant-ownership side. The national underwriter signed a definitive agreement to acquire all of the outstanding common stock of O’Charley’s Inc. Read on for more details about the definitive agreement.

United Lender Services announced plans to expand its title insurance business — possibly tripling its size — during the next year. Read on for more about the expansion and for possible employment opportunities.

The term robo-signing hit the main stream in 2010 amid the massive foreclosure freeze that saw the nation’s largest lenders halt production and reexamine their documentation procedures. The term has not gone away. First came the Nevada attorney general’s lawsuit against LPS, and now Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan is suing Nationwide Title Clearing for what she claims is faulty document filing with county recorders. Read on for more from the lawsuit.

Insurance rating organization A.M. Best Co. is requesting comments from market participants in the insurance industry and other interested parties on the following draft criteria reports. Read on for more information about the reports and how you can comment.

The Home Data Index Market Report from Clear Capital showed another year-over-year drop (2.6 percent) in home prices in January after months of stability, but perhaps the most concerning statistic from the first report in 2012 is what’s happened to the Midwest market.

In an effort to better equip their customers, Adeptive has formed a strategic alliance with Simplifile, the leader in e-recording services. Read on for more about this latest integration.

Fannie Mae released a report listing the largest producers of multifamily mortgage financing in 2011. The rankings are based on the volume of work these lenders pushed through Fannie’s Delegated Underwriting and Servicing (DUS) platform. Read on to see the top 11 and other key findings from Fannie Mae.

The December Home Price Index (HPI) report from CoreLogic, showed the full-year look at home prices and, once again, prices in the market dropped year over year. Read on for the findings from the full report, including the comparisons of distressed and nondistressed prices.

Jeff Carlson, senior vice president at Indecomm Global Services, a business process outsourcing company, has been named the new chair of the Minnesota Electronic Real Estate Recording Commission.

The process of replacing the current HUD-1 with a brand new disclosure form is now in round three. Let’s take a look at the latest draft prototypes, what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is asking from you and what the national association has said regarding this stage of the process.

A title company located in New Mexico abruptly shut down this week amid rumors of disbursements not reaching their expected destinations, and now, the New Mexico Public Regulation Commission said it has launched an investigation.

RealMetrix, a national provider of real estate information products and services, announced the launch of its new company website.

Refinances have been the order of the day in the market the last few years, and if President Obama has anything to say about it, this trend will not only continue but increase going forward. Enter the latest refinance plan. This time the president wants to extend a hand to underwater homeowners with private mortgages to refinance at today’s historically low levels. Will this latest proposal mean a new flood of refinances in the market?

As the Market Snapshot indicated earlier in the week, the Northeast portion of the country is showing some life lately. The latest data from the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) shows that more activity might be on the way.

Can a government-sponsored enterprise that is supposed to be a benefit to homeownership make investments against a homeowner’s ability to refinance? According to a report this week from National Public Radio, that’s the gist of one of Freddie Mac’s investment strategies.

Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) responded to the civil complaint filed by the Nevada attorney general against the company in December 2011. In the company’s motion to dismiss, LPS argues that Attorney General Catherine Cortez Matso’s complaint contains “significant legal defects which require the court to dismiss the complaint with prejudice.” Read on for more from the company’s response to the court.

The Market Snapshot for December, brought to you by The Title Report and eLynx, shows the continuation of a five-month trend across all regions. Read on to see this month’s market snapshot map.

Recently, Westcor Land Title Insurance Co. announced a new director of lender services for its organization, but that was only part of the story. Read on for more about the latest addition.

Fitch Ratings officially downgraded Old Republic International Corp.’s ratings and is keeping the company at Watch Negative. As reported late last week, Fitch Ratings placed Old Republic on Rating Watch Negative after the company had to place its mortgage insurance subsidiary into supervision. Read on for the impact this move has on the company’s title insurance segment and what Fitch’s outlook is for the company going forward.

As part of our recent series of stories on the value proposition of regional underwriters in today’s world, I asked one of our sources, Michael Waiwood, Midwest regional counsel for North American Title Insurance Co., if regional underwriters had a tougher time when the economy was down. Read on to see what Waiwood had to say.

The third quarter of 2011 delivered 30 percent fewer foreclosure sales compared to the same time a year earlier and 22 percent fewer from only one quarter earlier, according to data from RealtyTrac. Read on for more from its latest report.

Amid some of the negatives on the books for this year, Old Republic’s title insurance segment, along with the general insurance segment, showed improvements and turned positive for the first time since 2007. Read on for more on the results.

In response to the news of an Old Republic International Corp. subsidiary being placed into supervision, Fitch Ratings has announced that the ratings of the company and its insurance subsidiaries are on Rating Watch Negative. Read on for more from Fitch, Old Republic’s SEC filing and the company’s Q4 and year-end earnings report.

Purchase applications decreased nearly 10 percent from the previous week, and refinance applications declined as well, according to the Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey. Read on for more data.