Kate Berry

The GSE regulator's second attempt to stimulate the mortgage market is receiving a lukewarm reception from lenders, who remain gun-shy after being forced by Fannie and Freddie to repurchase billions of dollars in soured loans since 2008.

A wide swath of banks, from Fifth Third to SunTrust to Huntington, report big increases in refinance applications in the past few days as mortgage rates have dipped. Will it last?

Mortgage lenders are threatening to halt lending on condominiums in Nevada after the state Supreme Court upheld a law allowing homeowners associations to foreclose ahead of first mortgage holders.

Market tumult and a disappointing third-quarter revenue report Wednesday loomed larger over Bank of America, putting it in a bind unique among the nation's megabanks.

The Mortgage Bankers Association continues to push back against regulations stemming from the financial crisis, as the industry's biggest lobbying group continues pushing for regulatory relief to bolster the housing market — and boost profits for its members.

Elliot Salzman, an executive at the $76 billion-asset BBVA Compass, belongs to a small club of lenders: those willing to take a chance on making home loans to risky borrowers.

Lenders desperately want to make potentially lucrative home loans to those with less-than-stellar credit, but only a few are willing to try given legal uncertainties. Here's how a few are designing their products to get a jump on the competition.

The regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should require banks and mortgage lenders to obtain independent, third-party tests to ensure compliance with its guidelines, according to a government watchdog report.

In the coming months, banks, mortgage lenders, consumer advocates and policy wonks will be slicing and dicing the latest Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, as they do every year. Rarely, if ever, have the stakes been higher.

At least two mortgage servicers say they are close to being released from an OCC enforcement order that required 14 of the nation’s largest bank servicers to fix flaws in their foreclosure reviews. But the OCC says it has set no timetable for freeing any of the banks from the 2011 order.

Banks and mortgage lenders may have received too much relief from loan buybacks, putting taxpayers at greater risk for losses, according to a Federal Housing Finance Agency inspector general's report.

Automakers routinely track and measure the failure rates of everything from a car's brakes to air bags to power steering. Now banks and lenders are being forced to think much the same way about mortgages.

New regulatory and investor compliance requirements have put a renewed emphasis on quality control measures. But lenders are discovering the additional costs of these efforts are outweighed by the savings from originating fewer defective loans.

The Federal Housing Administration wants lenders to make fewer mistakes when writing mortgages for the government insurance program. The agency also wants to serve more borrowers with low credit scores. Getting both may be tricky.

A conservative housing critic and liberal consumer advocate have created a 15-year home loan for low-income borrowers to build more equity.

Banks with large mortgage operations are struggling with lower profit margins, detrimental fair-value accounting rules and new regulations that add cost. The market is discounting their stocks as a result, but many of these banks say the blanket assessment is unfair.

Moody's Investors Service downgraded two servicer ratings for Ocwen Loan Servicing, reflecting additional scrutiny by regulators and concerns about the nonbank mortgage servicer's ability to ensure timely payments to bondholders.

Ginnie Mae President Ted Tozer took issue with a government watchdog report that criticized both his agency and the government-sponsored enterprises for failing to catch the massive fraud at Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.

Bank of America has lost more than $60 billion on its acquisition of Countrywide, including the cost of last week's big settlement with the Justice Department. But its issues are hardly over. The pain will continue for years as it has hundreds of thousands of delinquent, unsellable mortgage loans to work through.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae all overlooked warning signs about Taylor, Bean & Whitaker that make them partly to blame for the mortgage lender's multibillion fraud scheme, according to a government watchdog report.