Government

Nichole Guthneck will help to lead Guaranteed Home Mortgage Company as its newly-appointed division leader, the company announced. In her role at Guaranteed, Guthneck is responsible for training, hiring, oversight, marketing, and policy for Guaranteed Direct, the firm's web-based residential mortgage platform.

First-time claims for unemployment insurance edged up by 4,000 to 367,000 for the week ended September 29, the Labor Department reported Thursday. The previous week's report was revised upward to 363,000 first time claims from the originally reported 359,000. Although initial claims appear to have plateaued (occasional weather-related spikes notwithstanding) first time claims fell in only five weeks during the third quarter, with a wide range: As high as 388,000 in the week following the July 4 holiday week and 385,000 in each of the two weeks following Hurricane Isaac, but as low as 352,000 when the quarter began.

Tree.com, Inc., and LendingTree, LLC, are welcoming a new senior leader to their ranks. The entities recently announced that Nikul Patel has been appointed as senior vice president of products.

Commercial mortgage-backed security (CMBS) delinquencies have posted substantial declines over the past two months, according to Trepp.

Ocwen will buy the Dallas-based servicer and originator from private equity firm WL Ross & Co. The breakdown for the transaction includes $588 million in cash and $162 million in Ocwen convertible preferred stock. Atlanta-based Ocwen won't need to raise additional equity capital to complete the transaction.

In her first monthly report as California Monitor, Katherine Porter described the servicers' efforts to reform their practices before the October 2 deadline.

Radian Guaranty, Inc., a private mortgage insurer and subsidiary of the Radian Group, announced it will reward current insured borrowers through the Responsible Homeowner Reward program, which is administered by Loan Value Group LLC, a company founded in 2008 to provide borrower incentives to protect investors and servicers.

Mortgage applications saw increased activity in the last week of September, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported.

Missouri-based Mortgage Returns is celebrating a strong 2012 thus far, recently revealing that the company's revenue has grown significantly since January. The database management and automated marketing services provider has reported a 50 percent uptick in revenue since the start of the year.

The settlement struck between the nation's five largest mortgage servicers and the U.S. Department of Justice and 49 state attorneys general calls for reforming mortgage servicing practices with the implementation of more than 300 standards. As described by the attorneys general's own negotiating committee, the banks must "accomplish a massive undertaking" to put all the servicing standards into practice as ordered under the agreement. They were given 180 days.