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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FHFA disputes FHA chief's market share claims; Fannie's non-optional option for lenders; Florida judge derides the "chaos" of "Foreclosure World."
May 26 -
"Our appraisal quality and timeliness has gone up, not down," says one lender who gave the job of ordering appraisals to employees outside the sales force.
May 26 -
In a surprise reversal, the delinquency rate on single-family mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration has fallen in each of the last three months amid record volume.
May 24 -
The Treasury Department extended the deadline to Sept. 30 for mortgage servicers to sign Sarbanes-Oxley Act-type agreements certifying that they are in compliance with the Making Home Affordable Program.
May 21 -
A year ago, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac became de facto legislators of industrywide standards for home appraisals. Soon they will be front-line enforcers, too.
May 20 -
California's push to ban deficiency judgments on refinancings; rising delinquencies suggest foreclosure crisis has yet to peak; rising incidence of protests suggest same.
May 19 -
State supervision of nonbank mortgage lenders — an industry group that was a key part of the "shadow" financial system widely blamed for the crisis — is becoming as tough as federal oversight of depositories. And in some ways, tougher.
May 17 -
The Treasury Department wants companies receiving federal incentive payments for modifying troubled loans to sign an agreement certifying they are in compliance with the Making Home Affordable initiative's more than 800 requirements.
May 13 -
People claiming to be Census takers swamp an REO manager with calls about vacant homes; why S&P didn't rate the Redwood deal; and more.
May 12 -
In its efforts to support the housing market's tenuous recovery, Fannie Mae took on slightly more risk with the new loans it bought or guaranteed in the first quarter.
May 10 -
The financial turmoil in Greece could trigger a rebound of mortgage refinance activity in the United States. Or not.
May 7 -
It used to be common for children to piggyback on their parents' credit to buy a car. Now, according to an auto leasing company, the opposite is happening.
May 6 -
Man locks self in house, demanding a county foreclosure freeze; parents use grown children's higher credit scores to lease cars; and more.
May 5 -
Two years after founding the company known as PennyMac to scoop up distressed mortgages, Stanford Kurland has rejoined a business he knows well from his years at Countrywide Financial Corp.: buying and securitizing newly originated prime loans.
May 4 -
GMAC Inc. posted its first quarterly profit in nearly three years and said it is contemplating an initial public offering to help the car and home lender repay some of its $17.3 billion of federal bailout funds.
May 3 -
A month or two before Fannie Mae's new quality-control requirements take effect, lenders are grumbling that the changes will delay closings and reduce originations without much improving loan quality.
April 29 -
Lenders contesting loan-buyback requests find themselves in the doghouse when selling new loans to the same investors; and more.
April 28 -
The Treasury Department is threatening to deny or even claw back incentive payments to mortgage servicers that are not modifying loans according to the administration's guidelines.
April 22 -
U.S. short-sale program called prone to type of fraud called "flopping"; SEC v. Goldman pays Wells Fargo a compliment; and more.
April 21 -
Fannie Mae has decided that certain distressed borrowers who agree to give up their homes as an alternative to foreclosure should get a second chance at homeownership sooner.
April 15
