Industry News

In business, executives often spend months modeling synergies, forecasting EBITDA improvements, and calculating cost savings. Yet the factor most likely to determine whether a merger, acquisition, or integration succeeds rarely appears in a spreadsheet: culture. The homebuilding industry offers a useful example. A structured, process-driven builder such as Beazer Homes and a more entrepreneurial organization […]

Christina Harmes discusses CRMP ethics, emotional intelligence with senior borrowers, and outreach that drives HECM for Purchase volume.

Lenders often mistakenly treat loan officer productivity as an individual trait, overpaying for top producers while ignoring the structural and operational factors that actually drive those results. By redefining productivity as an outcome of market alignment and investing in mid-tier originators, institutions can reduce costly turnover and achieve more sustainable, long-term growth.

One number released this past week says inflation is running away from the Federal Reserve’s 2% target. Another says it’s nearly there. At his confirmation hearing in April, Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh urged the central bank to pay more attention to lesser known gauges, turning what had been a technical debate among economists into a live question for policy.

Americans are voting with their feet, leaving high-tax blue states for lower-cost, Republican-led states and reshaping the nation’s economic and political map, according to new Census Bureau data. As states battle for residents and businesses, low-tax red states are attracting jobs, investment and population growth. Democratic-led states continue relying on higher taxes to fund public services and social programs, even as companies and wealthy residents move elsewhere.

According to Hippo Insurance's 2026 Homeowner Anxiety Report, 25% of homeowners say that homeownership-related anxieties have a high or extremely negative impact on their quality of life, with almost 1 in 5 saying that homeownership is their No. 1 stressor (on par with those who listed their careers or relationships in the top spot).

American home purchase lending tumbled to its lowest quarterly total in more than a decade during the first three months of 2026 as elevated home prices and climbing mortgage rates shut out buyers across most of the country. ATTOM, a property data and real estate analytics provider, reported that total residential mortgage originations fell 13% quarter-over-quarter to 1.57 million loans in Q1 2026, with dollar volume slipping 12% to $577.7 billion.

Kim Taylor bet her career on the housing market. In mid-2023, the real-estate agent launched her own brokerage with her husband, Gordon Taylor. The market in the Fort Worth, Texas, area had cooled from its pandemic-era frenzy, but business was good. Taylor started out with a team of seven agents and quickly brought six more onboard.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is launching a plan next week to end telework for agency employees – with few exceptions – and reassign them to the bureau’s new headquarters, according to a Wednesday memo seen by Banking Dive. The reassignments include roughly 450 CFPB employees who live outside the D.C. area – typically near the bureau’s former regional outposts in New York, San Francisco, Chicago and Atlanta.

Weekly inventory rose to 795,921 but turned negative year over year versus 803,479 last year, with Memorial Day affecting the data. Mortgage rates ended the week at 6.56%, price cuts were 36.88%, and purchase apps were up 5% year over year.

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. has agreed to acquire Taylor Morrison Home Corporation in an all-cash deal valuing the national homebuilder at approximately $8.5 billion, the companies announced Friday. Under the definitive agreement, Berkshire will pay $72.50 per share in cash, a 24% premium to Taylor Morrison’s closing price of $58.50 on May 29, 2026. The transaction […]

Housing inventory turned negative year over year as supply hit 795,921 vs 803,479 last year, with rates at 6.56%.

A Las Vegas Realtor says social media now drives 100% of her pipeline, including 5 closings from a 320,000 view video.

Single Gen Zwomen are significantly outpacing their male counterparts in the pursuit of homeownership, according to new survey data from the National Association of Realtors. Single women within the generation accounted for 35% of all Gen Z homebuyers, while single Gen Z men represented just 18%, according to the NAR survey.

Hostile takeovers don’t happen often among publicly traded companies in America, and they’re even rarer in U.S. homebuilding. So a little over a week of public quiet during Dream Finders Homes’ hostile pursuit of Beazer Homes should not be mistaken for inaction. Rather, this may be the phase when the under-the-hood work moves out of […]

HousingWire Data shows the median list price of homes in Florida at $495,000, with the median price of new listings at $450,000.

Tennessee MLS Realtracs plans to cut Zillow feed June 1 over IDX display compliance, as brokers work on direct listing feeds.

Supporters argue it could ease affordability pressures while critics warn it may fuel higher home prices and reshape local tax structures.

Sales of new U.S. single-family homes fell in April as the boost from better weather faded and mortgage rates remained elevated. New home sales dropped 6.2% to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 622,000 units last month, the Commerce Department's Census Bureau said. Sales were weighed down by winter storms in January before bouncing back in February and March as temperatures warmed up.

Ohio is holding off on new tax breaks for data centers, as the lost revenue from the subsidies far exceeds earlier projections. On Tuesday, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine directed the Ohio Tax Credit Authority to hold off on consideration of any new data center tax exemptions. The state legislature has a Joint Data Center Committee that is studying the growth of data centers in Ohio.

MV Realty, the company that marketed a controversial homeownership benefits program that locked consumers into a relationship for 40 years, has now settled its legal matters with the California Attorney General's office. The deal follows agreements reached with officials in Nevada, Pennsylvania and North Carolina during April. Massachusetts entered into a settlement with the company in March, as did Colorado.

FinCEN has appealed a Texas federal court ruling that vacated its nationwide anti-money laundering rule for residential real estate transactions. While reporting is not currently required while the court order remains in effect, ALTA will continue monitoring the litigation because conflicting federal rulings and pending appeals could determine whether title companies must comply with the rule in the future.

Housing inventory going negative year over year in 2026? Who had that in their bingo card? Even with mortgage rates up as much as 0.76% from the year’s lows at one point, housing demand, for the most part, has held up well in 2026. Last week, our weekly pending home sales data showed positive week-to-week and year-over-year growth, while housing inventory only grew 0.89% year over year. Let’s take a look at the weekend tracker and note that the Memorial Day weekend will impact the tracker data next weekend.

A former senior executive at the Atlanta Housing Authority was sentenced to federal prison last week after prosecutors said she spent years abusing her oversight role to steal housing assistance funds, fraudulently collect pandemic relief money, and misrepresent facts in a mortgage refinancing application. Tracy Denise Jones, 61, of Atlanta, was sentenced May 20 to nine months in prison, followed by nine months of home detention and 15 months of supervised release, according to the US Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Georgia.

Zohran Mamdani has ambitious ideas for New York City housing. The Mayor's Office dropped its detailed policy plan — called "Block by Block" — on May 26, outlining goals to build more apartment buildings, convert unused offices and hotels into living space, and help residents navigate one of America's most expensive housing markets. Housing access has been a cornerstone of Mamdani's affordability agenda, with buzzy promises to freeze the rent for a large swathe of NYC apartments and address "bad landlords."

The housing market remains hot in much of the country, with rising prices creating affordability concerns for would-be buyers – though some markets are seeing sizable amounts of price cuts over the last month. Several markets across the Sun Belt and Mountain West regions have seen price cuts more frequently than the national average, data from Realtor.com showed.

Homebuying is already a difficult enough undertaking for many Americans thanks to high home prices, elevated mortgage rates, and constrained inventory. So if you’re one of the millions of people currently caught in the “sandwich generation” of financially supporting both your aging parents and growing—if not fully-grown—children, the idea of also putting money toward a home might feel downright impossible.

The legal and regulatory future of FinCEN’s Residential Real Estate Rule remains uncertain following a federal court decision in Texas vacating the rule and the government’s subsequent appeal. While FinCEN recently clarified that title companies are not currently required to file reports while the court order remains in effect, the litigation has raised significant questions for the title industry about timing, compliance obligations and what comes next. Read on as ALTA General Counsel Steve Gottheim answers questions about the status of the litigation, the appeals process and w

Residential construction activity was mixed again in April, as building permits rebounded while housing starts pulled back modestly from March’s stronger pace. The latest Census Bureau data continues to reflect a construction sector navigating uneven demand and affordability pressures.

Title insurance premiums ultimately totaled $18.5 billion over the course of 2025, a 13.8% increase from 2024, according to the American Land Title Association (ALTA), reporting annual and fourth-quarter figures for the industry on Friday. “While the housing market continued to face affordability pressures and constrained inventory in 2025,” said Chris Morton, CEO of ALTA, “the increase in title insura

Maryland Governor Wes Moore signed legislation directing the state to study whether blockchain technology could help record and verify real estate ownership amid growing concerns about quitclaim deed fraud. The article notes both support and skepticism around blockchain, with experts emphasizing that technology alone will not solve deed fraud without broader coordination among property owners, recorders, courts, law enforcement, notaries and other trusted parties.

A new white paper from Houlihan Lokey details how rising technology, compliance and cybersecurity costs are driving mergers and acquisitions among mortgage service providers. HousingWire reports that mortgage vendors are entering a new phase of consolidation, with deals across title, processing and other mortgage services underscoring how lender expectations around scale, compliance and cybersecurity are shaping the broader mortgage vendor landscape.

Kevin Warsh has been on the public scene for two decades, with a long list of speeches, podcasts, op-eds and interviews about what he thinks the Federal Reserve is for and where it has gone wrong. So why are there so many questions in markets and in Washington about what he will do now that he is about to be the Fed chair?

Mortgage rates saw a dramatic spike Thursday, hitting a nine-month high as resurgent inflation stemming from the Middle East conflict pushed Treasury yields upward. The average rate on 30-year fixed home loans jumped to 6.51% for the week ending May 21, up 15 basis points from 6.36% the week before, according to Freddie Mac. For perspective, rates averaged 6.86% during the same period in 2025.

Short-term rentals have become an easy villain in Arizona’s housing crisis—accused of pulling scarce homes off the market, inflating prices, and turning once-quiet neighborhoods into revolving doors for tourists. But a new analysis suggests the state’s affordability problem runs much deeper than platforms like Airbnb.

Jobs can feel precarious right now as well-known companies keep slashing workers. But headline-grabbing layoffs and corporate justifications can give a misleading impression about what ails America’s job market and AI’s role in that. It could lead people to misjudge their career prospects or financial risks. The numbers show that layoffs in the U.S. are roughly at or below levels from before the pandemic, although they are higher than in 2022 when businesses snapped up workers as the economy roared back to life.

There’s a lot to love about Jennifer Gross’s new Phoenix home. The stucco four-bedroom with a clay-tiled roof has a three-car garage, overlooks a park and comes with a brick-bordered pool and a hot tub. It has arched entryways, floor-to-ceiling windows and a second-story balcony. The best feature: Her dad bought it for her.

Abilene builder Gene Lantrip is on the front lines of Texas’ population boom, but a new force is making it harder to finish construction on homes. Data centers are poaching the electricians he needs to install light switches and wiring that power his duplexes. The state has added more than 2.6 million residents since 2020, bringing in a steady surge of workers and families who need homes.

As buyers return to the market this spring, the percentage of home sellers cutting their asking price is falling and home prices are rising, according to a Redfin report. Just over 35% of sellers in the United States decreased their asking price in April, down from 35.6% in March on a seasonally-adjusted basis and a record high of 36.6% in August, the report found. But April's mark was up 1.1 percentage points from a year prior.

Barney Frank, the former Massachusetts congressman and chief architect of the Dodd-Frank Act, died at 86. Frank’s influence on housing and finance policy was far-reaching: As House Financial Services Committee chairman during the subprime mortgage crisis, he helped shape the federal response to the 2008 financial crisis, backed support for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and pushed reforms that strengthened oversight of banks, mortgages and consumer financial protections

ALTA CEO Chris Morton joined Brody Mullins and David Castagnetti on the Inside Influence podcast to spotlight the power of industry advocacy and why it is important for title professionals to tell their stories directly to lawmakers and the public. Morton elevated the critical role ALTA members play in protecting consumers, strengthening the real estate transaction and helping policymakers understand the value of title insurance. The conversation was an opportunity to showcase the title industry’s voice and impact with key advocacy audiences in Washington.

When the Station Fire roared through the Angeles National Forest in 2009, Colleen and Jason Warnesky could see it from the front porch of their Altadena, Calif., home. Eleven years later, the family witnessed the Bobcat Fire from the same spot as it became one of the largest fires in Los Angeles County history.

President Donald Trump is expressing confidence that Congress will be able to pass landmark bipartisan housing legislation despite disagreement between the House and the Senate over certain provisions. The housing legislation has been a point of interchamber contention. Last week, the House released an amended version of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, housing legislation that already passed the Senate overwhelmingly, but that lawmakers in the House and several outside stakeholders had big issues with.

Growing concern over the trajectory of the war with Iran has bond yields rising and mortgage rates following suit. The average rate on the 30-year fixed loan rose 7 basis points Tuesday to 6.75%, according to Mortgage News Daily. That is the highest level since July 31. Rates are now up 33 basis points in just the last 10 days and are 46 basis points higher than their recent April low of 6.29%.

House hunters planning to move this summer may not need as much cash for a down payment—a welcome break for buyers finally catching a bit of good luck. A new report from Realtor.com economists shows the median down payment fell to $23,400 in the first quarter of 2026—down 19% from a year earlier and marking the lowest level in four years. The shift signals that buyers don't necessarily need the biggest down payment to make the winning bid.

More than 17,000 people were under evacuation orders in Southern California on Tuesday as a wildfire threatened suburban homes. The wind-driven Sandy Fire was reported Monday in the hills above Simi Valley, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) northwest of Los Angeles.

Contracts to purchase previously owned U.S. homes increased for a third straight month in April, likely as ‌a retreat in mortgage rates pulled buyers back into the market. The ‌pending home sales index rose 1.4% last month to 74.8, the National Association of Realtors ?said on Tuesday. Economists polled by Reuters had forecast contracts, which become sales after a month or two, increasing 1.0%.

Blake and Beth Horio bought a home in 2022 in a Henderson, Nev., community thinking it would be an ideal place to retire. But soon, cracks began spreading across the ceilings. Their sliding glass doors wouldn’t open. Their foundation sank several inches, leaving a gap underneath the house.

As homeowners sit comfortably on sizeable equity and low mortgage rates, many of them are turning their attention to renovations or paying down debt. Americans this year are projected to spend $518 billion on home renovations, according to the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) released three new frequently asked questions May 18 clarifying the status of its Residential Real Estate Rule following a federal court decision in Texas that vacated the regulation nationwide. The FAQs address status of the rule and clarifies whether reports must be filed while the court's order remains in force and if reporting would be required retroactively if the rule is reinstated.