Nearly half (48%) of a $65 billion portfolio of loans processed during the first quarter of 2024 contained vulnerabilities to wire and title fraud, according to a report released Wednesday by FundingShield. The portfolio of loans examined included residential, commercial investor and business purpose loans.

On a quarterly basis, the index showed a seasonally adjusted price increase of 1.7%, mirroring the growth rate seen in the fourth quarter of 2023. Prices also increased 1.7% on a non-seasonally adjusted basis. “Home prices continued to rise in the first quarter as the housing market remained seriously supply constrained,” Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae’s senior vice president and chief economist, said in the report.

Existing-home sales plummeted 4.3% in March compared with February, falling to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.19 million, and were down 3.7% compared with March 2023, as rising mortgage rates stopped the rebound heading into the spring home buying season, according to the National Association of Realtors.

The median U.S. home sale price increased 5% compared to last year’s numbers during the four weeks ending April 14, rounding out at $380,250—just $3,095 shy of June 2022’s all-time high. That’s according to a new report from Redfin. The average daily mortgage rate this week surpassed 7.4%, the highest level since last November, after a hotter-than-expected inflation report and the Fed’s confirmation that interest-rate cuts will be delayed.

The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), a division of the U.S. Department of the Treasury, is sounding the alarm over challenges faced by elder financial exploitation. In a newly released trends report, FinCEN highlighted more than $27 billion worth of “suspicious activity” across more than 155,000 filings of Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) data with FinCEN between June 15, 2022 and June 15, 2023.