Government

In Tennessee, Quality Mortgage Services, LLC announced the opening of QMiS Systems, a provider of knowledge processing outsourcing (KPO) and business processing outsourcing (BPO) designed to serve the financial services and banking industries.

Fairway Independent Mortgage Corporation, one of the nation's largest mortgage banks, announced the hiring of Phyllis Cheong and Pattie Wainright-Hosti as senior loan officers serving Georgia's greater Savannah area.

Global DMS and MortgageFlex announced that Global DMS' eTrac Enterprise platform is now integrated with MortgageFlex's LoanQuest loan origination system (LOS).

Bill Armstrong, founder and chairman of Colorado-based Blueberry Systems, LLC, was named by the Leadership Program of the Rockies (LPR) as the recipient of its 2013 Legacy Award.

While more than 90 percent of homes purchased in 2011 were existing homes, more than half of homebuyers declared a preference for new homes, according to the National Association of Home Builders' (NAHB) Characteristics of Home Buyers, an analysis of the 2011 American Housing Survey conducted by the Census Bureau. Along with their preference for new homes, survey respondents expressed a desire for energy-efficient homes. According to NAHB, these two qualities go hand-in-hand.

CoreLogic's Home Price Index (HPI) saw its greatest yearly increase in nearly seven years in January, the analytics provider revealed Tuesday. Home prices nationwide--including distressed sales--rose on a year-over-year basis by 9.7 percent in January. The spike represents the biggest increase since April 2006, CoreLogic said. CoreLogic's Pending HPI, a metric measuring current trends in home prices, indicates that prices (including distressed sales) in February will likely match January's year-over-year improvement.

While Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), anticipates the gradual reduction of the GSEs in the housing market, he does not believe either Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac will exit conservatorship and return to the private sector. As such, FHFA's goals for this year expand on last year's three main goals of building an infrastructure for the future of the secondary market, contracting the GSEs' role in the market, and maintaining the GSEs' foreclosure prevention and credit availability efforts.

First Financial Network, an Oklahoma City-based loan sale advisor, recently announced the addition of a new SVP of business development. First Financial welcomes Tim Buss, an industry veteran who began his career in 1987.

National asking home prices have risen 7.0 percent year-over-year since bottoming out last February, Trulia revealed in its February Price Monitor Report. Seasonally adjusted, asking prices increased about 1.4 percent from January and 3.0 percent quarter-over-quarter, marking two post-recession highs. Nationally, inventory fell 23 percent year-over-year in February. Jed Kolko, Trulia's chief economist, explained that while falling inventory boosts prices, the relationship works both ways.

Vericrest Financial, Inc., announced it has completed onboarding two new portfolios of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs).