News By Edition

Changes in the title insurance industry are often the result of chain reactions from events outside the industry. Whether it is the decision of a regulator, lender or underwriter, title and settlement agents often must adjust accordingly.

Since the CFPB splashed the April 2012 Bulletin in the water, enterprising companies have tried to ride the ripples into the shore. Some have tried to provide new services or ideas, from third-party vetting companies like Secure Settlements to eLynx working on a national settlement provider database to several technology companies working on email encryption in order to make customer communication more secure. Others — mostly mid-size to large companies — are prepping for the increased oversight by merging, acquiring and expanding their title and settlement services — some starting to focus on this segment for the very first time or integrating it into other ancillary services they have always had. We reached out to a few of these growing companies to gauge their motivations and outlook for the industry.

Associates at more than 1,700 Stewart Title Guaranty Co. agencies and Stewart Agency Services banded together to raise more than $45,000 in the company’s Community of Sharing program. The 2013 campaign supports HelpingaHero.org, an organization committed to helping wounded veterans attain homeownership.

While every attorney and every title agency owner has faith that the people they hire are trustworthy and able to do the task before them, it is critical to remain vigilant of the business being conducted by all employees and the processes the company has in place. The Legal Description traveled to the Attorneys Title Insurance Fund’s 49th Annual Assembly and heard Margaret Williams, Fund risk manager, provide tips on how to provide that level of awareness, from pre-hire throughout the staff member’s employment.

ISGN Corp. announced the addition of a former Xerox executive as its chief product officer who will oversee ISGN’s technology business unit, which includes all aspects of the mortgage life cycle from loan origination to servicing and default management, as well as construction lending, settlement services and vendor management.

Ernst Publishing Co., a provider of technology and closing cost data for the real estate and home finance industries, has been selected for the 2013 Best of Albany Award in the Publishers category by the Albany Award Program.

FirstClose, an aggregator in mortgage settlement services, announced that it hired someone to manage the company’s Southeast territory. The company said this addition will help satisfy a growing demand for FirstClose’s end-to-end settlement services offering and supporting technology solutions for use by mortgage lenders.

Indecomm Global Services, a business process outsourcing and learning solutions company, has acquired the assets of Mortgage U Inc., a recognized leader in mortgage training. The acquisition will allow Indecomm to expand its learning and mortgage training offerings, as well as its total compliance support and consulting.

The CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indexes estimate that home prices increased by 7.3 percent in 2012, the strongest rate of appreciation in nearly seven years. The analysis also projected that the trend of rising home prices will continue in 2013 and beyond. In the five-year period from the fourth quarter of 2012 to the fourth quarter of 2017, home prices are expected to rise at an annualized rate of 3.9 percent.

W.J. Bradley Mortgage Capital LLC, a privately held mortgage banking firm, made two big announcements that propelled its position in the mortgage lending ranks. One move in particular pushed the company to status as the fourth-largest independent mortgage lending firm in the country.

Linear Title & Closing, a national title agency that specializes in processing a wide variety of loans for lenders, recently released an updated version of its software tool called Change of Circumstance. This software is helping lenders accelerate an approval during its processing of a loan application.

After skidding for a few months, homebuilder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes improved, moving three points to a 44 in May, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index.

RealtyTrac housing market analysis of building permit data recently released by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development for the first quarter and compared it to foreclosure starts for the same time period at the national, state and city level. According to the company, the results suggest a shift of the market.

First American, Old Republic and Investors Title all recently declared quarterly dividends. Read on for the round-up of announcement.

Mortgage applications decreased 7.3 percent from one week earlier, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey for the week ending May 10.

Nationwide Title Clearing, Inc., a post-closing services provider for the residential mortgage industry, has released a new white paper that outlines its 10 top issues that mortgage loan servicers must consider when undertaking the lien release, the last step in the mortgage loan servicing process.

WFG National Title Insurance Co. has named a senior vice president, compliance and licensing who will be charged with ensuring that WFG National Title maintains full compliance with state mandated licensing and registration necessary to conduct title, settlement and appraisal management business at the state level and also develop comprehensive audit programs.

As one of the nation’s largest providers of title insurance and escrow services, Fidelity National Title Group NY Agency is launching “Total Access,” a business-building program that provides top agents with direct access to Fidelity Title Group’s staff, tools and resources.

In this View from the Underwriter column, a rotating series of columns written by various underwriting professionals in the industry, Michael Schefstad, chief financial officer and treasurer of Westcor Land Title Insurance Co., shares his view on how a proper combination of auditing and centralized support enhance an independent agent’s business and the overall relationship with their underwriter.

RealtyTrac announced that Southern California real estate powerhouse Prudential California Realty was selected as the first member of the RealtyTrac Network, a licensed network available to leading independent and franchised brokerage companies across the nation. 

The lending division of Carrington Mortgage Services LLC announced the addition of an industry veteran as senior vice president of operations and the promotion of another team member to national sales director for its retail lending division. The recent changes reflect the company’s ongoing commitment to strengthening its leadership team and to better serve the market with expanded offerings, faster turn times and a broader geographical reach.

RamQuest Inc., a provider of business solutions for the land title industry, announced the implementation of RamQuest One at TitleCore in Nebraska. After a recent acquisition that substantially increased the size of its operation, TitleCore put together a team to review its title and settlement platform. Read on for more about the decision.

Much has changed in the way of marketing agreements in the past decade. With the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) at the helm, new regulations, an interpretive rule and the volatilities of the market, title insurance, mortgage, real estate and settlement services professionals need to be on alert with how they are structuring marketing agreements. Industry members should also be aware of where the market is headed in terms of business partnerships, alliances and other types of arrangements.

This year’s Voice of the Title Agent special report was the longest one to date — and we still had more content. Here is one of those features: We asked our agent respondents, just after what type of underwriter they prefer to work with: “More specifically, which is your favorite underwriter to work with?” It was an optional, fill-in the blank question.  See what our respondents said.

This was just one question amid a variety of title industry related business and opinion questions we asked in the 2013 Voice of the Title Agent survey this year. To download your copy of the special report, click here.

The March Mortgage Monitor report released by Lender Processing Services found that new problem loan rates have fallen below 1 percent for the first time since 2007 and is approaching pre-crisis levels. However, a borrower's equity position is still a key indicator of his or her propensity to default. Read on for more details from LPS.

LenderLive Network Inc. has appointed a vice president and national account manager who will be responsible for helping LenderLive Settlement Services develop strategic lender relationships.

Westcor Land Title Insurance Co. announced that a 27-year veteran of the industry has joined the company in the Mid-Atlantic region to assist with the expansion of business in Maryland and Virginia.

Carrington Holding Co. LLC announced that it is renaming several of its businesses in an initiative designed to bring the entire Carrington family of companies under one brand umbrella, more effectively leverage the Carrington name and capitalize on the full continuum of services offered by the organization’s various business units.

The number of U.S. housing markets showed one of its first drops, falling slightly to 258 in May from 273 in April, according to the NAHB/First American Improving Markets Index (IMI). This monthly report shows sustained improvement in three key measures, and the total list for May, while down, does include entrants from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

SKLD Information Services, a division of SKLD Title Service Inc., has long maintained an extensive image library of publicly recorded real estate documents in-house and online.  In mid-2012 the company embarked to extend its online database and have documents back to original land patents immediately available to their customers. Read on for the company’s update on the project as well as some of its other special services.

The Security Title Guarantee Corporation of Baltimore announced the hiring of a Pennsylvania state manager who will be charged with signing new agents and servicing the existing agency base in the state.

Attention is a finite resource, and part of being successful is learning how to allocate it wisely. Early in our careers we learn to pinpoint priorities, keep some items on the backburner, and ignore everything else. As contributor Alexander Crompton notes, sometimes it's the very things we start to gloss over in the interest of routine that are the most important.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was created, essentially, to make sure all of these financial service providers kept the consumer in mind. That was the easy part — figuring out how to actually do that has been the challenge of regulators and industry professionals the last three years. At the American Land Title Association Federal Conference, RamQuest and Guardian Consumer Services unveiled a new product that they think achieves many of the aims of the CFPB and the industry to provide a new environment that standardizes the closing process for all stakeholders.