Kate Berry

In less than a year, the insurance giant has gone from aiming for the top five in home lending to putting its origination business on the block.

Zombie mortgages, or home loans that are worth more than the underlying collateral of the house, are impeding a recovery in home sales and in the broader economy, according to Barclays Capital chief economist Dean Maki.

New York's largest foreclosure law firm agreed last week to pay $2 million as part of a settlement over questionable foreclosure practices with the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

Private lenders, never a big part of the student loan market, have exited in droves over the past few years. Now some analysts are warning that new potential legislation and an increasing wave of defaults could drive out the last few holdouts.

Irene Dorner, president and chief executive of HSBC's U.S. bank, is looking beyond the sales of her credit cards business and 195 upstate New York branches and planning to expand HSBC's operations in California and the West Coast.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should ease restrictions on sales of foreclosed properties and let individual investors buy up to 50 each, says Lewis S. Ranieri.

The Florida appeals court ruling could make it harder for mortgage servicers to use such records as evidence for foreclosure without verifying the underlying information.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are gradually increasing the guarantee fees they collect from lenders, and may discontinue the volume discounts they give large banks, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency Ed DeMarco said on Monday.

"We should not be penalized because we were not on the favored list of institutions that were deemed 'too-big-to-fail,' " Mike Perry says in a public campaign rarely seen from an executive of a failed bank.

A Fannie Mae announcement late Wednesday heaping praise on the highest-rated mortgage servicers was notable for its glaring omissions: Bank of America Corp., JPMorgan Chase & Co., and five other large banks did not make the list.

The New Jersey Supreme Court lifted a foreclosure ban on Ally Financial Inc. on Monday, removing the last state barrier that had prohibited mortgage servicers from resuming foreclosures one year after their widespread "robo-signing" procedures came to light. The court allowed five other large banks to resume foreclosing on delinquent homeowners last month.

Chicago's City Council published an ordinance Thursday that would require banks, mortgage servicers and institutional investors to provide maintenance and upkeep of vacant properties before the homes have gone through foreclosure.

Government-sponsored enterprise Freddie Mac told investors this month that it is not considering "significant discount pricing" when selling its backlog of foreclosed homes, according to a letter obtained by American Banker. A spokesman said the agency doesn't want to "tank" the housing market.

The state attorneys general have a secret weapon in their negotiations with the largest mortgage servicers: the results of a HUD investigation into the banks' robo-signing practices.

The Treasury Department said Thursday that it did not pay any incentives for foreclosure prevention efforts to Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. in the second quarter, as the two banks still need "substantial improvement" in their mortgage servicing operations. But Wells Fargo & Co. did make the cut.

Some of the largest mortgage servicers are still fabricating documents that should have been signed years ago and submitting them as evidence to foreclose on homeowners. Several dozen documents reviewed by American Banker show that as recently as August some of the largest U.S. banks, including Bank of America Corp., Wells Fargo & Co., Ally Financial Inc., and OneWest Financial Inc., were essentially backdating paperwork necessary to support their right to foreclose.

The Government National Mortgage Association said Friday that it is expanding the parameters for loans to be repuchased from its trusts to include those that have successfully completed a three-month trial payment period.

It will take less time than previously expected for the housing market to clear the supply of distressed homes on the market, but that so-called shadow inventory will still be around for nearly four years, Standard & Poor's Rating Services said this week.

The Mortgage Bankers Association raised its 2011 forecast of residential originations on Friday, citing historically low mortgage rates that have ignited refinance activity. But the higher projections do not indicate a recovery in the housing market.

A high proportion of business owners took out toxic mortgages on their homes, new data shows. Now in default, they can't access credit just as their firms' sales are tanking.