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A hard money lender who resides in University Place, Washington was arrested today after being indicted by the grand jury for conspiracy, making false statements on loan applications, and mail fraud. Emiel Kandi was taken into custody by the FBI and will make his initial appearance on the indictment in U.S. District court in Tacoma.

“The business practices of this defendant harmed individuals who lost their homes. Then, the lies told in mortgage documents harmed taxpayer funded institutions such as the Federal Housing Administration,” said U.S. Attorney Jenny A. Durkan. “These mortgage fraud cases result from thorough and intensive investigations. I’m grateful for the hard work of the dedicated agents and investigators working to hold Mr. Kandi accountable.”

Existing-home sales improved in May and remain solidly above a year ago, while the median price continued to rise by double-digit rates from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. Total existing-home sales, which are completed transactions that include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, rose 4.2 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.18 million in May from 4.97 million in April, and is 12.9 percent above the 4.59 million-unit pace in May 2012.

Visionet announced its ability to deliver complete and accurate HUD-1 statements in less than 30 minutes using proprietary technology. The company said this 30-minute window applies to even the most complex HUD-1 statements and includes automated processing as well as a full manual review, delivering accuracy of 99.9 percent.

Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS), provider of integrated technology, services, data and analytics to the mortgage and real estate industries, announced that Fidelity National Financial Inc. (FNF) has exercised its option to adjust the consideration mix in its previously announced acquisition of LPS by increasing the cash component of the total consideration by approximately $500 million and correspondingly decreasing the stock component of the total consideration by an equal amount.

A U.S. District court considered a motion to dismiss claims of predatory lending and fraud against Quicken Loans, where a borrower alleged the company had ordered inflated appraisals and embroiled him in a loan in excess of the true value of his home.

The court granted Quicken Loan’s motion to dismiss allegations involving the unauthorized practice of law; fraud and conspiracy; and joint venture, conspiracy and agency, but denied the motion to dismiss as to predatory lending, saying the plaintiff had stated a plausible claim for unconscionability.

The 21st century’s most valuable commodity is data. With the proliferation of laptops, smart phones, tablets, cloud computing and everything else in between, we are constantly exchanging data with others. In the appraisal industry, the uniform appraisal dataset (UAD) has opened a new analytical door that’s helping the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) improve appraisal quality in ways that were not possible previously.

ISGN Corp. announced a lending services and technology solution alliance between ISGN’s TCL product and Granite Loan Management (GLM). This new alliance offers a one-stop enterprise solution that leverages the synergies and best practices of two leaders in residential and commercial construction loan management.

Home prices continued to trend upward in May as growth spreads to more areas of the country, according to the Property Intelligence Report (PIR) from DataQuick.  The PIR shows especially strong housing performance in areas such as Denver and Salt Lake City, recently. Denver saw year-over-year home prices increase 13.6 percent in May, while Salt Lake City enjoyed a 6.4 percent increase. Over the same period, foreclosures were down 47.8 percent in Denver and down 60 percent in Salt Lake City. 

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and the U.S. Department of the Treasury released the May edition of the Obama Administration's Housing Scorecard – a comprehensive report on the nation’s housing market. Data continue to show important progress across many key indicators — as the annual home price increase is the highest since the housing bubble burst in mid-2006 and purchases of new and existing homes remain strong — although officials caution that a full housing recovery will take more time. 

The Alliance for Valuation Education, a new non-profit organization dedicated to providing greater availability of consistent, quality valuation education, created through the collaborative effort of 13 valuation organizations, is seeking candidates to serve as an At-Large member on its governing body, the Board of Regents. The position is open to appraisers as well as non-appraisers.

Work together and speak up about concerns you may have about how the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will enforce its requirement that lenders oversee all of their vendors. These were two of the main take aways from a session on lender liability at the 2013 National Settlement Services Summit on June 11. The group also discussed how settlement agents could start working with lenders now, despite the lack of clarity from the CFPB at this point.

“I think the stage is set, it’s time to take action even though the specifics of this vender due diligence, management and oversight have not been completely fleshed out,” said Francis “Trip” Riley, of the Princeton, N.J., office of Saul Ewing. “I think it’s time for you guys to start talking to, on the front end, your creditors and mortgage servicers about what they expect from you if they haven’t already, and on the back end, if you have third party vendors yourselves who talk to consumers, you should do the same thing your creditors and mortgage servicers are doing to you.”

Penny Reed, vice president, Wells Fargo Home Mortgage, agreed, and noted that while lenders are working on third-party vendor issues, they are also dealing with several other rulemakings that have nothing to do with the settlement industry.