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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Lenders face a condominium conundrum in Florida; private mortgage insurers get a break from state regulators' capital ratio requirements.
February 17 -
Citigroup Inc. said Thursday that it will allow defaulted borrowers to remain in their homes for six months and provide at least $1,000 for them to relocate if a borrower turns over the property's deed to CitiMortgage.
February 11 -
A community group says minorities in California were twice as likely as whites to have a home loan application denied in 2008, raising concerns that large lenders have returned to the practice of redlining.
February 8 -
"You will see steady progress, month by month" in reducing risk from the home lending unit, says Michael Carpenter, the auto finance company's CEO.
February 4 -
The cost of originating a home mortgage is soaring and profits are dwindling to the extent lenders can't pass the increases on. To ensure compliance with a slew of new regulations that recently took effect or are scheduled to over the next year, lenders are hiring armies of legal and quality-control specialists.
February 2 -
One of the less-examined cracks in the foundations of the Federal Housing Administration is the lending done in recent years by home builders' financing arms.
January 31 -
Fannie Mae is trying to attract buyers for homes it has repossessed by offering 3.5% of the price to cover closing costs, Whirlpool appliances or a combination of the two.
January 28 -
Environmentalists say neighborhoods where you don't need a car cut foreclosure risk; Cuomo probes "online retailers," including GMAC; and more.
January 27 -
Loans are expected to take longer to close and many home purchases could be delayed or are falling through because lenders are being held to the good-faith estimate of closing costs they present to applicants.
January 26 -
The Department of Housing and Urban Development gave more details Thursday on its plan to weed out underperforming Federal Housing Administration lenders.
January 21 -
A nonprofit is publishing average closing costs for every zip code, so home loan applicants don’t get overcharged; and more.
January 20 -
Tighter underwriting guidelines unveiled Wednesday by the Federal Housing Administration will make it harder for lenders to qualify borrowers in a year when origination volumes are already expected to tank.
January 20 -
With more than a million homes headed for foreclosure, and hundreds of thousands more in the process or repossessed, how long can lenders put off dumping these properties?
January 15 -
B of A is alleged to have foreclosed on a wrong home; First Horizon responds to FHA probe; and more.
January 13 -
Housing and Urban Development officials repeatedly said Tuesday that the department's "review" of 15 lenders was not an investigation and that the companies may continue writing Federal Housing Administration loans.
January 12 -
Some lenders fault the Department of Housing and Urban Development's plan to strengthen the Federal Housing Administration for — of all things — reducing regulation.
January 7 -
How HUD's good-faith estimate rule might give big lenders an edge — and how it might temporarily disadvantage banks; and more.
January 6 -
Struggling with their own problems, the mortgage industry's megaservicers are unlikely landing spots for GMAC Inc.'s troubled home loan unit.
January 4 -
The Department of Housing and Urban Development last week eliminated the 1% cap on origination fees for Federal Housing Administration mortgages.
January 2 -
Steep estimates for extinguishing negative equity of underwater homeowners; strategic defaults troubling default managers; Rep. Bachus sounds off on the GSE's blank check.
December 30
