Kate Berry

After slogging through several quarters of high expenses and shrinking profits, some lenders are now selling mortgage servicing rights to raise cash to cover payroll and expenses, industry sources say.

Rising home prices have emboldened some lenders to search for remaining underwater borrowers who have not refinanced. Wishful thinking? Maybe, but with home purchases scare, lenders have few other options.

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With more reliable loan data, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have greater confidence that borrowers would not default. In return, lenders would receive a juicy carrot: fewer buyback requests.

The dismantling of state agencies that funded affordable housing had upended nonprofit development in California.

JPMorgan Chase's weak forecast for the mortgage business surprises lenders.

The settlement monitor gave the banks credit for $20 billion in relief — less than half the total provided, since only partial credit was given for breaks other than principal reduction.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to address the growing problem of vacant and abandoned properties that banks and mortgage servicers have walked away from to avoid maintaining the homes.

The increased scrutiny, mortgage bankers complain, would end recent attempts to provide home loans to borrowers with weaker credit, something the FHA has been trying to spur for years.

After halting an Ocwen deal to purchase mortgage servicing rights from Wells Fargo, New York's Department of Financial Services is turning its attention to another nonbank servicer, Nationstar.

Two of the three major nonbank mortgage servicers are sticking by plans to acquire more portfolios from banks this year, despite regulatory scrutiny and concern they are growing too fast.

JPMorgan Chase's warning that it will lose money in the mortgage business this year is a forceful reminder that the housing market has not recovered from the downturn.

Bitter weather, the qualified mortgage rule's restrictive guidelines and the lingering effects of the foreclosure crisis have put a crimp in homebuying at an inopportune time for lenders.

"Servicers now face compensatory fees, not for mistakes or unreasonable delays, but simply as the cost of doing business," Mortgage Bankers Association President David Stevens says.

The largest U.S. bank's apartment loan business is mushrooming, aided by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac retrenching. Now JPMorgan is refocusing on a market where, surprisingly, it lags: New York.

New York's banking regulator unleashed a verbal assault on nonbank servicer Ocwen Financial Wednesday, saying the company's use of technology to better handle distressed loans is "too good to be true."

Regulatory intervention throws a monkey wrench into a mortgage servicer's growth plans -- and calls into question whether there are enough nonbanks to absorb all the servicing banks want to sell.

The New York regulator questioned Ocwen's ability to handle more volume after an independent monitor reviewed the mortgage servicer's operations, a person familiar with the situation says.

Lynn E. Szymoniak, famous for helping to uncover the robo-signing scandal, is now suing 22 companies for allegedly creating fraudulent documents and submitting tens of thousands of false claims to HUD.

A little-noticed charge taken by Regions Financial (RF) in the fourth quarter may portend that other banks will take similar losses on such modified loans, known as troubled debt restructurings.