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PLTA is proud to offer ALTA News to members
ALTA News: Headlines and news from various media sources, keeping you
"in the know" about issues impacting business and the real estate and
mortgage markets.
ALTA CEO Chris Morton discussed the responsible adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in his latest HousingWire column published this week: When AI is used as a tool — to reduce redundant work, surface inconsistencies and focus human expertise where it matters most — it can meaningfully improve the closing process. But if it is used to replace professional review in areas where certainty is required, it risks doing the opposite: putting homebuyers and lenders in greater peril, not less.
A construction lender just learned the hard way that having documents in your file means you actually have to read them. First State Bank of the Southeast thought it had done everything right. It made a construction loan to a builder, recorded its mortgage at the county clerk's office, and sat back as the first lienholder. But on February 6, 2026, the Kentucky Court of Appeals handed down a decision that should make every construction lender take a second look at what is sitting in their loan files.
Supply and demand in the housing market will combine to keep home prices flat this year as President Donald Trump’s efforts to improve affordability barely move the needle, according to JPMorgan Global Research. In a year-ahead forecast published Jan. 27, analysts said price growth will stall at 0% in 2026 after nearly doubling over the past decade, with a slight improvement in demand likely neutralizing a supply uptick.
U.S. homeowners are staying in their houses for the longest time in at least 25 years, largely thanks to their low mortgage rates, data shows. That — along with still-high home prices and tight inventory — is keeping the housing market on ice. Sellers at the end of 2025 had owned their homes for an average of 8.6 years — a record in data going back to early 2000, when the average was 4.2 years.
They’re called “zombie mortgages” — debts that homeowners thought were forgiven long ago, only to learn that they still exist and could cost them their homes. Economics correspondent Paul Solman and producer Diane Lincoln Estes report on these back-from-the-dead debts, in partnership with the documentary news group Retro Report.
The housing market has cooled off this winter with the annual pace of home price growth easing to levels unseen since the nation was recovering from the Great Recession. And while some areas continue to see strong price growth, others have seen notable declines. New data from Cotality, a data analytics and tech company in the real estate, mortgage and insurance industries, showed that annual housing price growth slowed to just 0.9% in December, which was one of the softest rates since the post-Great Recession recovery.
The February 2026 ICE Mortgage Monitor Report has been published by Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. The analysis indicates that the drop in mortgage rates at the start of January created refinancing opportunities for almost five million borrowers and contributed to affordability reaching a four-year peak.
The ALTA 50 Endorsement is designed to address originating lenders’ requests for the deletion of certain exceptions relating to solar energy systems installed on one-to-four family residences, and to meet Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac selling guide requirements in relation to those solar energy systems. Read on to learn more.
On Monday evening, the full U.S. House passed overwhelmingly (390-9) H.R. 6644, the Housing for the 21st Century Act. The housing package aims to tackle supply and affordability challenges, modernize local development, and improve government housing programs. ALTA supports this legislation and was a part of the real estate coalition that helped craft this bill.
ALTA applauded the U.S. House of Representatives for passing the bipartisan Housing for the 21st Century Act, legislation aimed at modernizing federal housing policy and expanding access to safe, sustainable homeownership. The bill was passed by a vote of 390-9.
The share of U.S. homeowners with high rates on their mortgages has jumped sharply in just the last few years. That’s having a marked impact on the refinance market and a somewhat more muted impact on home sales. Rates have been front and center in the debate over how to improve home affordability—and for good reason.
There are two ways to get back to the level of home affordability Americans had for much of the last decade, according to Realtor.com. Neither looks realistic anytime soon. In 2019, the mortgage payment for a median-priced home took up about 21% of median household income. Today, it accounts for more than 30%, reflecting sharply higher home prices and mortgage rates that have nearly doubled since January 2022, according to a recent analysis from the real estate listings platform.
Employers announced 108,435 job cuts in January, the highest tally for the first month of the year since 2009, according to a report out Feb. 5, and a sign employers may be taking defensive steps against economic uncertainty.
Three of the nation's largest housing markets are seeing a sharp rise in the number of homes for sale, giving buyers more choices even as the overall U.S. housing market shows signs of cooling. In January, 46 of the country’s biggest metro areas had more homes on the market than they did a year earlier. Seattle saw the biggest increase, with inventory jumping 32.4%.
Imagine walking into a car dealership and being told that a new car would cost you less than a used car. All else being equal, a buyer would likely wonder, “What’s the catch?” Examining what the Mortgage Bankers Association recently described as a “relatively large number of new homes available for sale,” a new analysis from the Urban Institute highlights how that backlog of completed unsold homes has resulted in an unusual reversal of which homes typically fly the highest price tags.
Mortgage fraud risk continued a gradual climb through the end of 2025, according to the latest Cotality National Mortgage Application Fraud Risk Index. The quarterly index for Q4 2025 registered 133, a modest increase from the prior quarter and a 1.5% year-over-year rise compared with Q4 2024. That level translates to an estimated one in every 118 mortgage applications showing indications of potential fraud.
The housing market has been a sensitive topic for many Americans over the past few years, according to new Rocket data and Yahoo Finance. With mortgage rates and home prices staying high beyond pandemic levels, many people lost faith in the American dream of homeownership, with younger generations abandoning the notion entirely.
Mortgage application activity moved lower again last week, extending the pullback from January’s earlier burst of demand as weather disruptions and softening purchase activity weighed on overall volume. The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) reported that applications declined 8.9% for the week ending January 30.
Reverse mortgage borrowers whose loans were previously serviced by U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) subcontractor NOVAD Management Consulting LLC may receive reimbursement checks in the mail following a 2024 enforcement action brought by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) notified its members on Friday morning in a memo. The CFPB’s website states that “affected consumers are receiving a refund because of a settlement in this lawsuit” and that as of Jan. 30, victim compensation is ongoing.
When Dan Kuncio and Maria Karpov, who live part-time at 12 First Light Lane, learned three years ago that a vacant lot at 10 First Light Lane, abutting their property, was listed for sale online, the wheels in their minds started turning. Fortunately, their lawyer, Karen A. LaVoie, became suspicious.
In Ageron Energy LLC v. ETC Texas Pipeline, LTD Justice Busby authored a concurring opinion in the denial of a petition for review to the Supreme Court in which he criticized the majority opinion of the Court of Appeals saying it undermines important protections afforded mineral rights owners.
America faces a serious housing shortage, one that Moody’s estimates would take more than 2 million new homes to resolve. But over at Goldman Sachs, analysts put the number at 3 million. Zillow’s estimate tops 4 million, while Brookings projects 5 million, and McKinsey says 8 million. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans insist the shortfall is closer to 20 million.
More homes hit the market in January, but inventory growth is contracting as builders pull back in response to depleted demand. Active listings were up 10% YOY, the 27th consecutive month of gains, Realtor.com’s January Housing Report found. But that momentum is slowing: growth, while positive, has diminished for the last nine of those months.
Americans are holding onto their homes longer before selling, particularly in pricey coastal markets. Homeowners who sold in the fourth quarter of 2025 owned their homes for an average of 8.55 years — up from 8.05 at the same time last year and the longest stretch in data going back to 2000, according to ATTOM, a real estate data company.
The three credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — say the complaint portal is being abused by third-party credit repair firms and AI bots. Credit repair firms are using the CFPB's complaint portal to try to remove accurate but negative information from credit reports. Credit reporting complaints hit an all-time high in 2024 of more than 2 million complaints, up 180% over two years.
Congress has ended a three-day partial shutdown by approving funding for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other agencies through Sept. 30, 2026. Congress cleared the fiscal year 2026 spending package that was subsequently signed into law by President Trump, ending a brief partial government shutdown that began early Jan. 31. The House approved the measure Tuesday afternoon, following Senate passage late last week.
Homebuilders facing a glut of unsold houses—the largest in 15 years—are quietly turning to Washington for help, hoping federal action might keep their inventories from becoming financial dead weight. The Wall Street Journal reports that companies such as Lennar and Taylor Morrison have met with senior administration officials, including Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, to discuss potential relief measures.
President Donald Trump’s economy is booming. But if you’re looking for a job, good luck. The Labor Department reported on Thursday that job openings in December unexpectedly dropped to their lowest level since mid-2020, during the heart of the Covid-19 pandemic. It’s a sign that companies have cooled on hiring despite an economic expansion that the White House has framed as the dawn of a new Golden Age.
After over three years of work by the Joint ALTA/NSPS Work Group, the 2026 Minimum Standard Detail Requirements for ALTA/NSPS Land Title Surveys were adopted by the American Land Title Association and the National Society of Professional Surveyors in October 2025 with an effective date of Feb. 23, 2026.
Late-stage mortgage delinquencies—defined as payments at least 90 days past due—increased 18.6% in December compared with a year earlier, a new report has found. The share of mortgages in that stage of nonpayment increased to 0.2%, up from just under 0.17% in December 2024, according to new research from credit scoring firm VantageScore.
Home builders are scrambling to offer new policy proposals to the White House, looking for help to unload the biggest glut of housing inventory in 15 years. The policy list includes streamlining the federal permitting process and using federal grants to incentivize local governments to enact zoning overhauls, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The office sector led commercial real estate property types in price gains over the past year, reversing a decline from 2024 despite broad market headwinds. Value-weighted office property prices, which are more heavily influenced by higher-priced deals in major markets, rose 3.8% in the 12 months ended December, according to CoStar's Commercial Repeat Sale Indices. That is a stark contrast to 2024, when office prices in the category fell 11.4%.
Federal Reserve governor Stephen Miran said he has resigned from his job as a top White House economic adviser, ending an unusual dual role he had held since he joined the central bank in September. The move allows Miran to keep his promise to step down from the White House if his time at the Fed were to extend past Jan. 31, when his term at the central bank expired. Miran can stay in place on the Fed’s board of governors until a successor is confirmed.
After years of climbing to record territory, U.S. homeowner equity eased modestly in Q4 of 2025, according to ATTOM’s latest Home Equity & Underwater Report. The data underscores what industry analysts describe as a normalization of the housing market — stabilizing after unprecedented gains that followed the pandemic and into the early 2020s.
Even though incomes are rising, education levels are improving, and poverty is decreasing, affording life in Texas is becoming more challenging, according to new data from the Texas Tribune and the Census. U.S. Census Bureau data released Thursday indicate that, although the state has experienced strong economic growth since the beginning of the decade, Texas incomes have not kept up with national averages.
A new Redfin analysis suggests that young Black Americans are moving further away from homeownership even as their white peers made modest gains, deepening a racial gap that mortgage leaders long pledged to narrow. The real estate giant found that 14.2% of Black Gen Zers owned their home, compared with 31.6% of white Gen Zers.
You receive a call from IT support about a critical security issue affecting your account. The caller ID matches your company's number. They urgently instruct you to log in to verify your identity-and while you type your password, they see every move and control what's on your screen in real time. Read on as Genady Vishnevetsky, chief info security officer for Stewart Title Guaranty Co. and chair of ALTA's Information Security Work Group, provides tips to protect yourself from this phishing tactic.
The House this week is racing to end a partial government shutdown that took effect on Saturday. The lower chamber will consider a massive funding package that includes five full-year appropriations bills and a stopgap measure to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) at preexisting levels for two weeks. The Senate passed the package last week.
No institution has more influence over what Americans can afford than the Federal Reserve, one most people rarely follow but feel every month in their finances. On Friday, President Donald Trump nominated Kevin Warsh to succeed Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a move that could alter how aggressively the central bank approaches interest rates.
A plethora of active home inventory floods the market, but there are some metros where there are not enough listings, creating a seller’s market. Realtor.com economists identified 10 metros that had the lowest months of supply as of October 2025.
In today’s K-shaped economy, lower-income consumers headed out to shop may be hitting Dollar General or a post-bankruptcy Big Lots, but affluent Americans are increasingly headed for the shopping center private club. Membership clubs are increasingly being seen as retail revitalizers, whether that’s in a traditional mall, open-air shopping center, or as a stand-alone commercial real estate tenant.
With an epic snowstorm hitting large areas of the U.S. recently, I expected housing data to take a hit after the solid start we had already seen in 2026, but it remained mostly positive, which surprised me. The big key to that, of course, is that mortgage rates, even with all the crazy headlines recently, are still near 6% and didn’t show much volatility even with all the Fed news we had last week.
Home prices in the United States climbed to new records in 2025, even as profit margins compressed and access to homeownership grew more uneven between cash-rich buyers and households dependent on financing, according to ATTOM’s latest year-end sales report. ATTOM found about 3.9 million homes changed hands last year, with the national median sale price rising to $360,000, up 2.6% from 2024 and 39% above 2020. Typical gross profit slipped to $118,710, representing a 49% return, down from a 55% margin in 2024.
Mortgage-backed securities (MBS) are debt obligations that represent claims to the cash flows from pools of mortgage loans, most commonly on residential property. These mortgages are funded by lenders across the U.S., who, in turn, sell them to Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae (or issue MBS through the Ginnie Mae process), or pool them and sell them to investment banks. Put another way, most residential mortgage loans are purchased from banks, mortgage companies, and other originators and then assembled into pools by governmental, quasi-governmental, or private entities.
The real estate market may be showing signs of improvement for first-time homebuyers as 2026 begins, with experts pointing to stabilizing mortgage rates and increased housing inventory as positive factors. Home prices have changed drastically in recent years due to COVID-19 and other influences. WGEM News spoke to housing experts who say the combination of stabilizing rates, freeing housing inventory and stabilizing home prices will benefit first-time buyers.
Many home shoppers have given up on the depressed housing market, where sales are stuck at a 30-year low. But those buying are enjoying discounts at the highest rate in years. About 62% of buyers last year purchased a home below the original listing price. That was the highest proportion since 2019, according to a new analysis by the real-estate brokerage Redfin.
President Trump plans to nominate former central banker Kevin Warsh to be the next chair of the Federal Reserve, in hopes that Warsh will follow his roadmap toward much lower interest rates.
President Donald Trump has reacted to the Federal Reserve's decision to hold interest rates steady, calling Fed Chair Jerome Powell a "moron" for refusing to deliver ultralow rates. Powell does not set interest rates alone, but joined the 10-2 majority on the Federal Open Market Committee on Wednesday to vote in favor of leaving the Fed's benchmark rate unchanged in its current range of 3.5% to 3.75%.
Mortgage rates fell this week, with the 30-year fixed rate averaging 6.18%, down from 6.25% last week, according to Bankrate’s latest lender survey.
Apartment rents continued their slide into the new year, as fresh supply still makes its way through the market, and landlords strive to gain pricing power over a struggling consumer. The national median rent in January was $1,353, a drop of 1.4% compared with one year ago, according to Apartment List. This is now the fourth consecutive winter with a “pronounced” offseason dip, and is the largest annual drop since September 2023 and the lowest January rent since 2022.
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