Markison recently retired with more than 30 years from the federal government, most recently as assistant general counsel for government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) with HUD. Markison is widely recognized as a top experts on RESPA—a cornerstone law for protecting consumers during the mortgage lending process—as well as regulation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

"We are honored to have Ken join our government affairs team," said MBA President and CEO Jonathan Kempner. "It is a testimony to MBA's existing talent that HUD's leading legal expert on RESPA reform and GSE issues has found a good fit here He brings excellent negotiation and coalition-building skills to MBA, having worked closely throughout his career with industry and consumer groups and other government organizations."

Markison developed several important RESPA rules during his three decades at HUD and has played a major role in HUD's RESPA reform effort. He also has worked extensively on GSE issues, including developing and drafting legislation and regulations establishing the GSEs' affordable-housing goals, fair lending and other regulatory requirements.

Throughout his HUD tenure, Markison served in a variety of positions, including chief attorney for business claims and information, liaison to the oversight board for the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC), assistant general counsel for administrative law and, most recently, assistant general counsel for GSEs and RESPA. Over the course of his career, he has earned HUD's highest awards for exceptional legal and government service.

"I am proud to have served at HUD for more than 30 years. It was an honor to serve as part of a team of hard-working professionals dedicated to achieving HUD's mission of increasing homeownership and affordable housing for all Americans," Markison said. "I look forward to joining MBA and working with the industry to achieve this same mission."

Markison's MBA portfolio will include the strategic oversight and development of industry positions on a host of regulatory compliance and legal issues affecting residential mortgage finance, including RESPA and the Truth in Lending Act (TILA). He replaces Rod Alba, who recently left MBA for a senior position with Ameriquest Mortgage's Washington, D.C. office.

Markison received his J.D. with honors from George Washington University National Law Center and his B.A. in political science, also from George Washington University. He is a member of both the Maryland and District of Columbia Bar Associations.
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The Market Composite Index of mortgage loan applications dropped to 643.9 during the holiday-shortened week, a decrease of 6.3 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from 687.0 one week earlier. The MBA seasonally adjusted Purchase Index fell by 6.4 percent to 468.8 from 500.9 the previous week. The seasonally adjusted Refinance Index fell by 6.1 percent to 1662.4 from 1769.7 one week earlier.

The refinance share of mortgage activity remained at 35.8 percent of total applications. The ARM share of activity decreased to 31.5 percent of total applications from 34.1 percent the previous week.
 
Interest rates showed little change. Rates for 30-year mortgages dropped by 1 basis point to 5.95 percent; 15-year fixed mortgage rates dropped by 3 basis points from the previous week to 5.36 percent. The MBA survey showed one-year adjustable-rate rose by 3 basis points to 3.93 percent. 

Other seasonally adjusted index activity included the Conventional Index, which decreased 6.4 percent to 945.0 from 1009.6 the previous week; and the Government Index, which fell by 4.8 percent to 141.6 from 148.7 the previous week.

The July 9 survey included a one-day adjustment for the July 4 holiday.
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Flory, who will run the Western region’s National Accounts division, had most recently been workflow program manager in Option One’s Lending Operations group. Upp joined the company in 1994 and has more than 16 years of experience. Butler, who has more than 21 years of experience, has been with Option One since 2002.

Rob Norwood has been appointed manager by RBC Mortgage, Chicago, of its new Peachtree Residential Mortgage branch in Charlotte, N.C. He will oversee loan origination and operations for the branch. Norwood is a 10-year veteran of the mortgage industry and previously worked as a loan officer at Southtrust Mortgage.

James Adams joined GMAC Commercial Mortgage Corp., (GMACCM), Houston, to run its Houston loan origination office. He previously worked with Kinghorn, Driver, Hough & Company as a senior vice president.

The California Mortgage Bankers Association, the state association representing the residential and commercial real estate finance industry, installed five new directors at the recent Western States Secondary Market Conference in San Francisco.

CMBA’s new directors include: Walter Tharp, senior vice president and director of wholesale lending for IndyMac Bank; Thomas “Tup” Fisher, senior vice president and director of Column Financial/Credit Suisse First Boston; W. Darryl Fry, president of ComUnity Lending, Inc.; Donald Curtis, senior managing director at Holliday Fenoglio Fowler; and Scott Calder, vice president of real estate finance at Pacific Southwest Realty Service .

CMBA’s existing officer include: Matthew Soto, chairman; Eric Von Berg, president of commercial; Robert Camerota, president of residential and treasurer; Robert Satnick, secretary; and Guy Johnson , immediate past chair.

First Home Mortgage, Mount Prospect, Ill., has announced the following seven loan officers have been named American Home vice presidents: Brian Fishman, Beth Lewis, Brett Lotsoff, Harry Pepoon Jr., Jim Ruker, Cathy Schneider and Tom Stotter .

Bruce Bergman has been elected to membership in the American College of Mortgage Attorneys. He is a partner at Certilman Balin in East Meadow, N.Y., and heads the foreclosure department.

ARCS Commercial Mortgage, Calabasas Hills, Calif., announced that David Sienkiewicz joined the company’s Orange County office as vice president. Sienkiewicz will focus on loan origination in San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. Sienkiewicz comes to ARCS with more than 15 years of experience in commercial real estate, having worked as an underwriter, appraiser, originator and a direct lender for the mortgage industry.

REI Data Inc, Houston, a subsidiary of Stewart Information Services Corp., named Gayle Bennett as vice president and national account manager. Bennett will have primary responsibility for development of title and property data product expansion throughout the West Coast, both to new and existing customers.
 
Bennett brings more than 13 years of sales and management experience in the information industry. Prior to founding GSB Notary Inc., Bennett worked in real estate information as a strategic account executive, marketing and selling real property data to major title insurance companies.
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Valocity, Memphis Tenn., completed the initial phase of its national expansion campaign. The company now has overage in all 50 states, as well as coverage in every metropolitan statistical area (MSA).

The company has a staff of 15 appraiser liaisons whose focus is identifying and recruiting qualified appraisers nationwide. The company currently has nearly 80 employees, including staff appraisers and a network of more than 2,300 independent contract appraisers nationwide.

Valocity’s technology, Instant Access is provided free of charge to appraisers, streamlining the process from initial request to final valuation. Instant Access is a Web-based appraisal process management system that allows appraisers and lenders to order, track and receive residential property information and valuation reports.

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Mavent Inc., Irvine, Calif., announced it selected AT&T to enhance its networking capabilities to meet strong demand for its enterprise class solutions from the nation’s largest financial institutions. The three-year contract is valued at $1.4 million.

Mavent Expert System is hosted by AT&T, providing customers with 24/7 service, security, advanced monitoring and automatic routing of data and other information. Mavent’s product is a rules-based enterprise application that provides the residential mortgage industry with consumer credit knowledgebase, enabling lenders and investors to more efficiently and effectively comply with federal, state and local consumer lending laws, rules and regulations.

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Boston-based MassHousing, is providing no-cost, job-loss protection coverage across its various programs.  The new benefit, called MI Plus, makes the principal and interest payments on a homeowner's mortgage for up to six months in the case of unemployment.

MassHousing's MI Plus coverage is included automatically on every mortgage loan that is insured by MassHousing on or after July 1.  These include all MassHousing-financed loans where the borrower makes less than a 20 percent down payment, as well as loans made by private lenders who select MassHousing as the mortgage insurer.

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Mortgage brokers now have the opportunity to lease network-quality television advertisements at a low cost through http://www.mortgageadz.com/ , a new service of Redtown Productions, Minneapolis.

The high-impact cable television advertisements put the spotlight on the mortgage broker to help build clientele and business through name recognition.

Mortgage brokers can lease for a year a library of six customizable television ads and lock in one or more cable TV viewing zones for as little as $500. The lease offers unlimited and exclusive use of the library in a viewing zone. The ads are available now.

This library of ads offers a range of content from heartwarming to humorous. All are attention grabbing. Each advertisement is customized to include name, contact information, graphic identity and call to action.

One of the advantages of advertising on cable is the ability to target key demographics in specific locations. Another advantage is the potential for hundreds of placements on channels such as CNN, Fox, MSNBC, ESPN, TLC, History, and Discovery through a local cable provider for as low as $1,000 per month.

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Despite an extension in the deadline from June 15, to November 15,  half of large U.S. companies polled are still less than 60 percent complete in meeting their Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) Section 404 filing requirements, according to a survey conducted by ACL Services Ltd., Vancouver, British Colombia, and the Center for Continuous Auditing (CCA), College Station, Texas.

The poll of 248 senior audit professionals at corporations with more than $1 billion in revenues reports considerable challenges meeting SOX Section 404 filing requirements.  In addition, the survey found that 67 percent of companies have no annual budget allocated to maintain Section 404 compliance after the initial filing requirement.

The Section 404 deadline is the first in a series of deadlines within the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and requires that corporate management teams assess the effectiveness of internal controls.  Punishment for false statements by senior management will include fines and jail time.

The ACL Services-CCA Survey showed that one quarter of respondents are only "mildly confident" or "not confident at all" in their company's ability to maintain Section 404 compliance after the first filing deadline.

As companies determine how best to maintain ongoing compliance with Section 404, they are looking more aggressively towards technology to minimize compliance costs.  Of the companies that have already begun using technology to perform continuous monitoring of their internal controls, 25 percent indicate that this continuous monitoring activity is directly related to Section 404 compliance.  Ninety-three percent of those surveyed stated that continuous auditing and monitoring is either important or very important for an effective SOX 404 compliance strategy.

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The Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for financial education, Dan Iannicola, will teach personal management skills to nearly 100 students participating in Camp Challenge in Stokes County, N.C. Camp Challenge is a summer camp open to boys and girls from low-income homes entering sixth, seventh or eighth grades. Camp Challenge is sponsored by the North Carolina Bankers Association, North Carolina 4-H Youth Development and the Department of Juvenile Justice S.O.S. Program.

The camp activities focus on preparing participating students for careers through classes in areas such as entrepreneurship, citizenship responsibilities, conflict resolution, as well as business and banking.
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"Although interest rates are increasing worldwide during 2004, the weight of funds for direct commercial real estate investments should persist, as contractual rental income will ensure higher returns than current low fixed income securities", a ResearchWorldwide spokesperson said.

Retail was the leading market sector in the U.S. with a 16.2 percent average return, according to the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF). Meanwhile, across the pond, the United Kingdom’s retail market outperformed its other sectors with a 15.5 percent total return, but Ireland's retail market garnered a 26.9 percent total return, with 21.4 percent coming from capital growth. Australia also found retail as its leading sector at 16.9 percent in total returns. Although South Africa’s retail market hit 17.4 percent in total average returns for 2003, it was just below the country's industrial market return of 17.5 percent.

"Direct investment into retail real estate, monitored in seventeen countries worldwide, showed a guideline average total return of 12 percent in 2003,” a ResearchWorldwide spokesperson said. “The industrial market in these countries averaged a total return of 9.6 percent, while the office market lagged at an average total return of 5 percent."

South Africa’s overcapacity in the office market led to an 8.5 percent total return in the office sector, the study said. Australia received a 6.9 percent total return for its office market, Ireland hit 6.2 percent in total returns and the United Kingdom could only muster a 3.2 percent total return for the sector in 2003, Research Worldwide said.

In South Africa, industrial vacancy rates dropped to 6.6 percent to help elicit its 17.5 percent return in 2003, followed by the Australian industrial market at 15.2 percent, and the U.K. industrial sector at an 11.3 percent total average return for the industrial market. Ireland fell below other industrial sectors at 6.7 percent in total returns for 2003.
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The original buildings, constructed in the 1940s, operate as affordable housing for the 198 total units, with 72 project-based Section 8 certificates and Section 8 vouchers available for other residents. The borrowing entity for the project is Westwood Properties LP, which formed in January 1989 to acquire the existing units and construct a second phase to the project.

Westwood Properties completed the second phase of the property in 1991. The 96 units of Phase Two were built with the assistance of Low Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTCs) and Delaware State Agency tax-exempt bond financing. The New Castle Department of Community Services recently granted a HOME loan to Westwood Properties to add a state-of-the-art security system throughout the project and replace the majority of siding on all of the 96 unit phase of the project.

The HUD-insured loan permitted the borrower to retire the bond financing and a portion of the secondary debt and convert to a 35 year amortized loan with HUD mortgage insurance and a fixed interest rate for the term of the mortgage. The loan term includes a 35-year amortization with the interest rate fixed at 5.35 percent and an 85 percent loan to value (LTV).

Terry Chuvala , first vice president of Love Funding Corp., originated the transaction.

“The owner provided affordable housing to the Wilmington community through a mix of tax credit financing, HOME loans, housing assistance and quality management,” Chuvala said.
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The Mortgage Bankers Association and STRATMOR Group conduct a semi-annual peer group benchmarking program that consists of detailed surveys and roundtable meetings. Currently, the program is starting a new data collection cycle based on June 30, 2004 six-month financials and is enlisting new participants.

Since its inception in 1998, this program has grown to more than 70 companies, including 17 firms in a separate Subprime survey initiated in 2001. Participating companies represent more than 40 percent of the national residential mortgage banking market. The program is widely recognized as the most timely and accurate source of benchmarking data in the country. In addition, participants derive unparalleled value from the dialogue at our roundtable meetings.

We collect loan production and servicing data via the web and generate a 46-page data book that displays financial and operating metrics for each individual company within a given peer group. For our prime company sample, each book also summarizes simple and weighted average aggregate totals for all other peer groups.  

Our roundtable meetings are conducted offsite and last a day and a half. Our discussions focus on business strategies, models used, best practices, industry trends, hot buttons, technologies employed, etc. MBA and STRATMOR prepare a detailed presentation that summarizes the results and provides extensive analysis across all groups and across various reporting periods.

Our current timeline and locations for current cycle are as follows:

July 15: Web site opens for data entry
August 16: Data due for mega lenders and large lenders
September 1: Data due for small/medium lenders and subprime lenders
September 21-22: Large Lender peer group roundtable in Boston
September 23-24: Mega Lender peer group roundtable in Boston
October 28-29: Subprime peer group roundtable in San Francisco (following MBA's Annual Convention earlier in the week)
November 18-19: Small/Medium lender peer group roundtable in Las Vegas (following MBA's annual Accounting, Tax & Financial Analysis Conference earlier in the week)

Visit our Web site at www.mbastratmor.com to view sample outputs, articles and a list of this year's participants in the study. To register or obtain additional information, please contact Marina Walsh (MBA Research) at 202/557-2817 or Jim Cameron (STRATMOR Group) at 770/632-4445.
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The goal remains the same as in our inaugural survey: to gather timely, complete and credible information on origination and servicing volumes using definitions that are applied consistently across the industry. For the midyear survey, we ask that you complete the first and second quarter time frames by August 13.
 
Based on your feedback, we have implemented several changes to our survey, including the addition of several new data items. The "Second Mortgages" section has been expanded to collect information on HELOCs and Home Equity Loans, while "Interest-Only" loans has been added to the "By Amortization Type" section.

By completing the survey in a timely fashion, you and your fellow survey contacts can make a considerable contribution to MBA's ability to attain and deliver reliable analysis on critical trends and activities in our industry. Evaluation of data will ultimately help companies such as yours gain greater perspective on origination and servicing volumes, and use that information to make sound business decisions.
 
Your participation in the survey also ensures that your company receives several detailed reports with analysis of the survey findings. Act now and you'll receive last year's executive summary.

Paperless Survey Completion Process
The survey is administered through a paperless process via the Internet, making completion simple, user friendly and efficient.
 
To participate in the survey, complete the following steps:
 
• Visit http://mymba.mortgagebankers.org
• Type in your user name and password to enter the survey site.
• Once logged in, select the 'Single Family Mortgage Activity Survey' link located in the yellow area to the left of the screen.

For More Information
Contact Mike Cevarr at (202) 557-2831, or send an e-mail to: mortgageactivitysurvey@mortgagebankers.org.
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"In the hotel sector overall, RevPAR is up by 8.4 percent year-over-year, and demand for new hotel rooms is expected to outpace supply by a strong 7.5 percent, because of strong demand and a shallow supply pipeline," said Sally Gordon, senior analyst at Moody’s and author of the report.

Moody’s uses the colors of a traffic light to describe the strengths or weaknesses of properties underlying commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). The “green light,” or strong property is in the range of 67-100, yellow falls between 33-66 and red identifies a weak property between 0-33. The green score of 69 for the overall property market in the first quarter of 2004 increased from 66 (yellow) in the fourth quarter of 2003.

Retail continued strong into 2004 as shopping centers hit an 83 score, compared with suburban office buildings still struggling at a 48 score, a statistic that parallels the rest of the world. Moody’s said it uses real personal income as the principal variable to project demand.

"Community shopping centers remain the star commercial real estate product with a composite score of 83, the highest of any property type,” Gordon said. “Furthermore, the sector's strength is broad-based. Of the 50 markets covered, only three have growth in real personal income of less than 1 percent, and none is expected to see this income measure decline."

The central business district office score dipped slightly from 58 last period to 57 and the suburban score slid from 51 to 48. Markets with a CBD and suburban score did not have green segments for both CBD and suburban office with the exception of San Diego’s market. Two markets, Dallas and Detroit, are red in both, and no U.S. office market has a red score in one segment with a green score in the other.

The industrial sector showed a slight uptick of one point in the Moody’s report, from 63 to 64, continuing its upward trend in the U.S. The sector refrains from new development as the industrial supply pipeline of new construction delivered 0.5 percent of inventory.

Although the multifamily score slipped from 80 in the fourth quarter of 2003 to 77 in the first quarter of this year, Gordon said the multifamily sector remains well within the green territory and retains a favorable outlook in the Moody’s report.

The report said the top 12 real estate markets across all property types in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2004 included Los Angeles, Orange County, Calif., Honolulu (although its rating dropped slightly from the previous quarter), Ventura County, Calif., New York City (with a 10-point increase), Miami, Washington, D.C., Memphis, Seattle, Riverside, Calif., San Antonio, and Westchester County, N.Y.

The ten worst U.S. markets included Jacksonville, Fla. (down 8 points from the previous quarter), Pittsburgh, Austin, Texas, Stamford, Conn., Oklahoma City (dropping 19 points from the first quarter), Denver, Dallas, Las Vegas, Chicago, and Columbus, Ohio.
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