Kate Berry

Steps that correspondent loan buyers have taken to avoid flipping schemes could be hurting the recovery in home prices; and more.

GMAC wanted to cut the costs of having processors and underwriters work on loans that don't get funded. So it gave the loan officers an incentive to do better up-front screening.

Matchmaking service created for troubled borrowers and journalists; GMAC ties loan officer compensation to loan performance; and more.

The Securities and Exchange Commission joined the chorus of policymakers calling for institutions to retain "skin in the game" in securitizations — raising the odds such a requirement will become reality.

The three latest government programs to cure the foreclosure crisis have at least one thing in common: none will likely be fully operational until this fall, which will push the politically potent issue beyond the midterm elections.

Despite falling behind on mortgages, borrowers continue to make payments on home equity loans.

Merscorp's electronic mortgage system will not be plaintiff on foreclosure actions after May 1; group pushing regulators for "transparency" in securitization market; and more.

Several key details are different, but the latest attempt to help underwater borrowers could run into some of the same fundamental problems that scuttled earlier efforts.

Buyers are finally taking a shine to "scratch-and-dent" loans and other nonperforming residential real estate assets, with sellers at long last happy to accommodate them.

The top four holders of second mortgages are now on board, but a government program to modify such loans in tandem with first liens will not be up and running for five months.

For more than a year, the mortgage industry has resisted calls to reduce principal for troubled homeowners en masse. Bank of America Corp.'s agreement to do so for 45,000 borrowers shows that in certain cases, there is now little left to lose, and perhaps something to gain, from such actions.

Quite apart from financial losses, the massive foreclosures of the past few years pose another, long-term problem for the mortgage industry: fewer potential borrowers.

Wells Fargo & Co. on Wednesday became the second mortgage servicer to agree to a government plan to modify the second liens of borrowers who have received a modification of their first mortgage.

Mods and short sales could soon get costlier for California borrowers; science fiction inspired by the financial crisis; and more.

The Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives program, which starts next month, will offer second mortgage holders up to $3,000 to give short sales their blessing. But such lenders have been demanding higher payments to extinguish their liens.

With delinquencies rising on Federal Housing Administration-insured loans, banks are expected to repurchase billions of dollars of such loans this year from the Government National Mortgage Association.

A scathing report by a Congressional watchdog examining the bailout of GMAC Inc. found that the Treasury Department did not adequately protect taxpayer money.

Lenders get a crash course in working with military clients; mortgage bond investors "second" Barney Frank on junior liens; and more.

Defaults and loss rates on home equity loans remain paradoxically low compared with those of first mortgages. The counterintuitive trend suggests that the staggering losses many had expected the industry to suffer on second liens will not come to pass.

Home lenders are smarting these days as Fannie and Freddie make them repurchase bad loans. But a multibillion-dollar windfall, courtesy of the GSEs, will mitigate lenders' pain.