Smashing. Fantastic. Great. Engaging. On Target.

Those are the comments I’ve heard today about FNC’s inaugural Servicing Executive Forum held at the historic Rosemont Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas yesterday. The steamy weather outside did nothing to dampen the invigorating and illuminating debate inside.

Attendees agreed the event was a huge success that should be repeated annually, if not even more frequently.

Most of the nation’s key servicing executives as well as

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Am I making the right underwriting decisions in this neighborhood? What is my market share? What is my share of the foreclosure action? How does my risk outlook compare in this neighborhood, or city, or state, to my competitors, or the industry as a whole? How about my staff’s and vendor’s performance? Am I leading or lagging the industry?

Enter FNC’s Mortgage Banking Intelligence (MBI).

Imagine a production report for the last quarter, showing your daily volumes. Now overlay

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The Arizona housing market seems to be showing signs of improvement for 2010. Nearly a year has passed since the housing market hit bottom in Arizona. We see an increase in non-distressed and distressed home sales across the board.

Non-Distressed: Over the holiday season, we see a sharp drop in condo sales. However, March condo sales are up 29% over the last six months. Single family home sales haven’t seen quite the up-swing: 7% decrease since September 2009. A

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Probably the biggest misconception about FNC is that it is an Appraisal Management Company (AMC). FNC is definitely not an AMC, although many clients that use FNC products and systems are AMCs. FNC is actually a mortgage technology company. So what FNC does is deliver deep expertise in appraisal compliance, workflow best practices, and process efficiency to mortgage lenders, servicers, AMCs, and secondary markets. FNC also provides real estate appraisers with a platform, known as

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The National Collateral Database™ combines appraisal, public record and other real estate sales and descriptive information into the most powerful real estate information database available to lenders and appraisers for the valuation and analysis of residential property across the United States. It is the National Collateral Database that fuels FNC’s data and analytics products and services.

What lies behind all this? Where does all this data come from, how does it fit together and

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I moderated a session on Collateral Risk with top industry risk managers at FNC’s Collateral Management Conference on January 26. Some of the insights from these leaders may confirm your own practices and policies, or offer insights on industry trends.

MODERATOR: Have you changed the valuation product mix as the

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This week, we once again refer you to our Guest Forum, where Pat Sullivan, SRA, has posted the second part of his look at the residential real estate market in South Florida.

Please visit our guest forum to read his post: "A Look at South Florida's Residential Real Estate Market (Part 2)."

This week, we refer you to our Guest Forum, where Pat Sullivan, SRA, has posted a look at the residential real estate market in South Florida.

Please visit our guest forum to read his post: "A Look at South Florida's Residential Real Estate Market."

It has been an active year for appraisal management company (AMC) legislation. Because of the activity, we presented an update on AMC legislation in June, 2009. Since then we have updated the presentation itself to keep up with the various changes this year (although we did not catch everything).

For those of you who are keeping

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At FNC, we’re here for you not only during the holiday season…

Count on us year-round to provide the support you need for your mortgage lending and servicing processes.

This year, in support of home owners nationwide, FNC is delighted to give to Habitat for Humanity in the name of our clients for whom we are truly grateful.

Happy Holidays from your extended family at FNC.

Recently one of our clients asked us to look at the relationship between sales price and appraised value across the country. We looked at about 200,000 sales transactions over the first nine months of the year and found that most of the appraised values were above the actual sales price.

The chart below shows the percent of purchase transactions where the sales price was above the appraised value.

» read full post

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posted in: Appraising, FNC, Lending, Mortgage, Valuation

Some news we have been hearing lately indicates that the worst of the recession is behind us and that the housing market is improving. No doubt many areas in the country are starting to see some improvement or at least the continuous fall in values has slowed. However, the housing market is still far from “normal” and there are a multitude of potential snags that will have to be overcome before the market can get back to anything that even resembles normal. Even the Mortgage Bankers

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Much has been written already about the circumstance where appraisers are covering greater distances than in the past in order to gain and fulfill appraisal assignments in a shrinking market. Whenever an appraiser roams over greater and greater territory, he or she needs to be concerned with one of the fundamental premises of appraising, that is, competence, especially what is called “geographic competence.” Geographic Competency is governed by the

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One of the most consistent observations FNC has been hearing lately from mortgage originators is that they are receiving appraisals from appraisers who are operating outside their regions of competence. In other words, they are appraising in neighborhoods where they don’t know the market.

As lenders know, the real value of appraisers is twofold. First, they can look at the house to assess the current condition; and second, they tend to specialize in a few markets that they know

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Blog. Such a strange and funny word. Say it repeatedly and it’s reminiscent of blah. "Blah, blah, blah." Isn’t that what a blah-g is all about? Just an electronic medium for saying what’s on one’s mind -- a venue for stream of consciousness, for random thoughts, opinions, commentary, criticisms – sometimes educational and informative, sometimes satirical or funny (e-musing, if you

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