Kate Berry has covered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for American Banker since 2016. She joined the publication in 2006 covering mortgage lending and the financial crisis. Berry also has covered big banks including Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. She has won five awards from the Society of American Business Writers and Editors, and has worked at several news organizations including the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Associated Press. Berry began her career as a clerk at the New York Times.
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Forthcoming regulations could make conventional mortgages more expensive to the wide swath of homebuyers and owners who can't put 20% down, depressing originations and potentially undermining the housing recovery.
March 21 -
Union Bank's got no beef with risk retention; banks place highly in "Best Company" contest ... wait, no, check that — it's "Worst Company"; and more.
March 16 -
For at least his first year as head of the MBA, David Stevens will be barred from having contact with the agency that matters most to many of the trade group's members: the one he's leaving.
March 15 -
The Federal Housing Finance Agency said it will extend for another year the Home Affordable Refinancing Program, which allows refinancing of underwater loans through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
March 11 -
"We've shown how you can run a business in a responsible way with safety and soundness," Stevens said.
March 10 -
A realtor group is stepping up pressure on servicers to reform the short sale process; housing market in Western states have a long way to go before a sustained recovery; and more.
March 9 -
If banks were looking for a palatable trade-off in state and federal regulators' plan to revamp mortgage servicing practices, they didn't find it.
March 8 -
Servicers call the 27-page proposal unfair and impractical. It's hard to see them convincing regulators of the former, but the latter objection is harder to dismiss out of hand.
March 8 -
The Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general found "systemic problems" in lenders' compliance with underwriting requirements for FHA loans.
March 4 -
The Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general found "systemic problems" in lenders' compliance with underwriting requirements for FHA loans.
March 4 -
Bank of America Corp. said Wednesday that it has created a pilot program in Arizona that will use money from the government's Hardest Hit Fund initiative to make interim mortgage payments and principal reductions for unemployed homeowners.
March 2 -
Two force-placed insurance tales — one funny, one not, neither flattering to banks; Freddie Mac wants higher down payments; and more.
March 2 -
As home lenders fret about a forthcoming regulatory proposal on risk retention, Freddie Mac will soon require a little more skin in the game from their borrowers.
March 2 -
Bank of America Corp.'s website suffered an outage starting Monday that has temporarily halted online banking to customers in California.
March 1 -
A decision by lenders to roll out pilots letting underwater borrowers refinance into FHA loans coincides with Republican efforts to scrap the FHA program the pilots would rely on.
February 25 -
Though lenders have long resisted entreaties to lower principal for underwater borrowers, Wells Fargo & Co. and perhaps Ally Financial Inc., formerly GMAC Inc., are poised to roll out pilots that would let such borrowers refinance into Federal Housing Administration loans and would write down the value of the credits.
February 25 -
Fannie Mae said it will give servicers more financial incentives to help borrowers avoid foreclosure.
February 23 -
Quicken Loans court case serves as a stark example of how mortgage lending can turn into fraud; subsidies for homeownership gets support from an economist at the Cleveland Fed; and more.
February 23 -
A California lender began selling jumbo loans this month to BlackRock, proof that private investors aren't waiting for the securitization market to fully recover before getting back ...
February 23 -
CoreLogic: home-sale estimates by National Association of Realtors far too high; FHFA puts down on paper how Fannie and Freddie should compensate mortgage servicers.
February 16
