SAN FRANCISCO – 1st Pacific CU has sold a downtown office building at 131 Franklin St. for $3 million.

ROCKVILLE, Md. – REALTORS FCU, the fledgling Internet-only credit union, has signed with CO-OP Financial Services to offer CO-OP’s My Deposit home deposit solution.

MEDFORD, Ore. – Rogue FCU plans to expand its free foreclosure-prevention and assistance program statewide.

OSHKOSH, Wis. – CitizensFirst CU began construction yesterday on a new 30,000 square-foot green headquarters.

KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – Jurors in a federal court made short work Tuesday rejecting a "diabetes defense," delivering a guilty verdict in less than an hour in the armed robbery of the Tennessee Members First FCU in December 2006.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA’s projections of increased losses on natural person credit unions are apparently being based on a stress test conducted recently on the National CU Share Insurance Fund that uses new data showing far greater exposure of credit unions to exotic mortgages, especially Interest Only and Payment Option loans, among other things.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – The continued deterioration of the mortgage market, as foreclosures and delinquencies rise, is expected to cause increasing losses on billions of dollars of mortgage-backed securities being held by corporate credit unions, according to NCUA.

ALEXANDRIA, Va. – NCUA told credit unions yesterday they can expect to pay an additional charge of about $1 billion into the National CU Share Insurance Fund this September.

MELBOURNE, Fla. – NCUA and the Florida Office of Financial Regulation on Tuesday agreed to the merger of Space Coast Credit Union and Eastern Financial Florida Credit Union.

* In an item about financial regulatory reform efforts, Brad Thaler is the lobbyist with NAFCU cited, not Brad Beal. Thaler said NAFCU and NCUA Chairman Michael Fryzel sought clarification regarding the White House reg reform plan because some of the language was “open to interpretation.”* An item quoting former Filene Institute Executive Director Bob Hoel's remarks at the event marking the 75th anniversary of the FCU act incorrectly implied Mr. Hoel would no longer be appearing at credit union events. Mr. Hoel intends to continue to appear before credit union events.

ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – Chicago-based Alliant Credit Union selected PSCU Financial Services and mFoundry to deliver mobile banking to its 250,000-plus members.

NEW YORK–CashEdge launched what it says is the first-ever P2P payment service for financial institutions, called POPmoney, which allows consumers to send email and mobile person-to-person payments from their accounts to other individuals using only an e-mail address or cell phone number.POPmoney is deployed directly directly from the financial institution as opposed to other existing services that use outside service providers such as PayPal and Obopay, CashEdge maintained.A recent survey conducted by CashEdge showed that 81% of respondents would use a P2P service if their FIs offered them and 77% preferred their own FIs to offer such a service over an independent service.

HARRISBURG, Penn.–Credit unions in this state have agreed to participate in “Get Help Now,” a volunteer initiative launched by Gov. Edward Rendell designed to provide financial and legal help to many Pennsylvanians who still face difficult situations while the economic recovery takes hold.In a statewide webcast, Governor Rendell announced he has enlisted attorneys, banking and mortgage professionals, and financial analysts who are knowledgeable in the area of finance, credit, and/or bankruptcy to serve on help desks in many of the county bar association offices, the Pennsylvania CU Association reported.Representing credit unions, there were 28 in attendance from the Pennsylvania Credit Union Association and 15 credit unions, including Cross Valley FCU, People's Choice FCU, Berks Community FCU, CTCE FCU, Lancaster Postal Employees FCU, Members 1st FCU, Pennsylvania State Employees Credit Union, Belco Community Credit Union, Main Line Health Employees FCU, HealthCare First Credit Union, Erie FCU, Erie General Electric FCU, TruMark Financial Credit Union, Sb1 FCU, and riverset credit union.

BOSTON–CUNA Chief Economist Bill Hampel, who for the past several years had argued credit union capital levels have been too high, acknowledged he has altered his view on the issue, although not significantly.“Now, instead of being comfortable with capital between 7% and 9%, I would recommend between eight and ten,” he said during CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference here. “What is going to happen in Washington, if anything, in the next year or so will be an increase in capital requirements. As for secondary capital, I think Congress might be willing to allow access to secondary capital now that it realizes the importance of capital.”

BOSTON–As it does at nearly every meeting, the question was raised during CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference here over why there isn’t a national, CU-sponsored advertising campaign, especially given the negative publicity the banking industry has received.The short answer, CUNA CEO Dan Mica made clear, is money. “Here’s the deal,” Mica said in response to one person’s question. “We’ve been looking at that, and the roundtable credit unions have been looking at that. We already have an ‘America’s Credit Union’ logo, and it’s beautiful. There are two ways to do this. The (national) campaigns cost money, and the last time I checked it was $40 million to $50 million a year, with a minimum of five years. To put that in context, CUNA’s dues are about $10 million. The other way to do it is we prepare the ads, and then distribute it to the leagues and the local credit unions. Most folks, particularly in this time, just don’t have the money to run the ads.”

BOSTON–Responding to NCUA’s corporate stabilization plan, which drove record numbers of credit unions into the red during the first quarter of this year, was a lose-lose proposition, according to CUNA CEO Dan Mica.Mica noted he continues to hear from CEOs who say their credit unions is so adequately capitalized that there is no need for the seven-year period NCUA proposed and Congress OK’d to account for the related costs. Those CUs disagree with CUNA’s support of the plan.“With the corporate stabilization, credit unions were going to be hit with some massive financial write-offs. We were told about 80% of all CUs in the U.S. would have had negative 80% ROA if we had not gotten the seven year (accounting period). Can you or this system withstand a series of articles across the nation about credit unions being reported in a negative light?” As for certain credit unions with very high capital levels, Mica suggested “some of you should take that and spend it on your members.” Mica’s remarks came during CUNA’s America’s Credit Union Conference here.

WASHINGTON–Though existing home sales showed its first back-to-back monthly gain since 2005, a separate report shows homeowners’ equity is still falling.Existing home sales in May increased by 2.4%. And though year-over-year, existing home sales are down by 3.6%, sales of single-family homes and condominiums increased by 1.9% and 6.1% respectively.Median housing prices also showed a monthly gain of 3.8%, but year-over-year, they have fallen by 16.8%.Overall, NAFCU Economist Katrin O’Connor said, the housing market continues to show signs of stabilization, benefiting from lower prices and first-time buyer tax credits.“At the same time, distressed property sales declined to one third of all sales,” NAFCU reported. “Foreclosures further depressed home prices, a trend that is expected to continue over the next few months. As long as mortgage rates do not increase significantly higher, we should start to see a stabilization in home prices and a clearing of the market’s excess inventory by the first half of next year. If the appraisal problems do not get resolved quickly, however, this might delay the housing market recovery and result in a further surge in foreclosures.In a separate report released by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, U.S. home equity fell by $2.5 trillion in 2008 and is now off $5.9 trillion from 2005–more than 43%.Southwest Corporate Economist Brian Turner said the study indicates that in states where housing prices have taken the biggest hits, home values have been diluted to levels resembling the 1990s and early 2000.“The study reports that after slipping 1.7% in 2007, the median price of existing single-family homes fell another 9.8% in 2008. This would put the aggregate decline in prices at approximately 30% for the period of October 2005 and January 2009,” Turner explained. “Still, home equity appears to remain more important to household wealth than other investments as home equity on average is at least triple the amount associated with household investment. Given the combination of low values and higher loan balances from cashing out equity, Moody’s estimates that more than 14 million households own homes that are worth less than their outstanding mortgage.”

FRAMINGHAM, Mass. – TJX Cos. Inc. will pay $9.75 million to 41 states for failing to protect customers’ financial information from a massive computer breach announced in 2007 that exposed millions of customers’ personal and credit card data to hackers, the company announced yesterday.

GALESBURG, Ill.–Gale Credit Union announced that Jennifer Rogers was hired as president June 1 to replace David Geer upon his retirement.Rogers has been with the credit union for three years, previously serving as accountant. She received her bachelor’s degree from Monmouth College and is a registered certified public accountant. Before working at Gale Credit Union, she worked as chief financial officer for seven years and two years at a CPA firm. Rogers and her husband Todd live in Galesburg.

JOPLIN, Mo.–Police didn’t have to look far to find the robber of a branch of Joplin Metro Credit Union here. Phillip L. Dodd walked into the Joplin Police Department last week and turned himself him after robbing the credit union.During the robbery, Dodd had allegedly threatened that he had a gun, according to police, who quoted eyewitnesses as saying he was initially described as wearing what was described as an orange “do-rag” over his face, but other CU employees identified it as a automobile “shammy rag” with eye holes cut out of it.