A team of mortgage finance and investment management veterans have announced the formal launch of a new company, BlackBox Logic LLC, providing a comprehensive database of loan-level collateral underlying non-agency residential mortgage-backed securities for investors, broker/dealers and researchers. BlackBox Logic also announced the availability of its loan-level data aggregation service, called BBx Data, which covers the jumbo A, sub-prime and Alt-A mortgage markets.Read more

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) has acquired technology to create a database of all properties in the U.S. so Realtors can better assist consumers in a high-tech, fast-paced business world. The technology acquisition includes licensed data and secured data aggregation services from LPS Real Estate Group, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS), a leader in real estate technology.Read more

Stan Wang, CMC, CRMS has announced the launch of Premier Brokers Network LLC (PBN), an organization created to facilitate the selection of outstanding mortgage brokers throughout the United States by PBN members and the public. This is accomplished via access to a database of carefully selected mortgage brokers, so that members may confidently recommend top rated brokers for their client’s financing needs in states where they are not licensed. PBN is a user-friendly Web-based service unlike any other.Read more

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued an opinion finding that Realcomp II–a Michigan-based Realtors’ group–violated federal law by restricting the ability of member agents to offer consumers lower-priced alternatives to traditional real estate services. Realcomp refused to transmit discount real estate listings to its own and other publicly available Web sites and excluded such listings from the default searches within its own database. The Commission found that these policies restricted access to these listings and harmed competition.Read more