It’s been three years since Credit Plus re-branded as Xactus, and now another name brand in the mortgage world has a new name. Corelogic has become Cotality, leading to plenty of puns like, “If First American ever considers rebranding, let’s hope they don’t use the same agency as Corelogic, as then we’d have… Fatality.” In other current events, I received, “Rob, thank you for the advice in Saturday’s Commentary about logging on to www.ssa.gov and printing out a hardcopy of my SSA earnings history and the latest seven Cost of Living Adjustment letters ahead of DOGE rewriting all the code. We found an error that would have cost me thousands of dollars.” In other good news, The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) reported on the performance of first-lien mortgages in the federal banking system during the fourth quarter of 2024. The OCC Mortgage Metrics Report, Fourth Quarter 2024 showed that 97.3 percent of mortgages included in the report were current and performing at the end of the quarter, an increase from 97.2 percent one year earlier. The percentage of seriously delinquent mortgages (60 or more days past due and all mortgages held by bankrupt borrowers whose payments are 30 or more days past due) decreased from the fourth quarter of 2023. (Today’s podcast can be found here and this week’s is sponsored by Calque. Calque provides a binding backup offer on your borrower’s departing residence to clear the existing mortgage balance and closing costs in 48 business hours or less. Today’s features an interview with NerdWallet’s Liz Renter on her company’s First-Time Home Buyer Affordability Report that focused on new insights from Q4 of 2024.)