Housing

Remember those homeowners who walked away from their underwater mortgages even though they could still afford their loans? They're back, this time as prospective borrowers.

Housing policy focused on government guarantees and the 30-year mortgage hasn't done much to help low- and middle-income homeowners build wealth.

Wells Fargo's tentative agreement to pay $1.2 billion to resolve claims by the Justice Department that it made shoddy FHA loans is bad news for other banks that are the targets of similar probes.

More than 1 million homebuyers qualified for a mortgage in the third quarter, the first time since the financial crisis that lenders reached such a threshold, according to research by the Urban Institute.

The House approved a bill 427-0 that would revamp the Federal Housing Administration’s condominium loan program and expedite the approval process for Rural Housing Service guaranteed loans.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unveiled an appeals process Tuesday that will allow an independent arbitrator to resolve disputes between lenders and the government-sponsored enterprises over loan repurchase demands.

Lenders argue that the GSEs would be better off buying more loans that are already insured, rather than transferring credit risk after holding them for a time. But Freddie Mac's Kevin Palmer says certainty of reimbursement is more important than the timing of risk transfers.

The near future may find more banks ceasing to originate residential mortgages in an effort to stop the slide in stock prices.

WASHINGTON — Key Democratic lawmakers are urging the Department of Housing and Urban Development to tighten its program for selling nonperforming guaranteed loans to ensure servicers have exhausted all loss mitigation options before the loans are sold to private investors.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is reducing the mortgage insurance premiums it charges on Federal Housing Administration multifamily loans to encourage the renovation of affordable housing units and promote energy-efficient upgrades.