Industries

The National Association of Realtors is teaming up with a coalition of environmental groups, taxpayer advocates and insurance companies to push Congress on flood insurance reforms.

Dime Community Bancshares has agreed to sell its headquarter building in Brooklyn for $12.3 million.

Freedom Mortgage of Mount Laurel, N.J., has agreed to pay $113 million to settle government allegations that it failed to comply with Federal Housing Administration requirements for originating and servicing FHA-insured loans.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is continuing to reject calls to slash the annual premium for the Federal Housing Administration despite a renewed push by the National Association of Realtors. But some predict the FHA may eventually cave in.

FHFA Director Mel Watt acknowledged that the principal reduction program may seem "too small and too late."

Quicken Loans plans to appeal a recent federal labor ruling that the Detroit lender and other companies owned by Dan Gilbert violated employees' rights.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's experiments with selling credit risk to investors are a critical element of new plan to merge the two entities and move them out of conservatorship, but what form so-called credit risk transfers take could make a big difference.

The housing market has been improving but mortgage credit remains "stubbornly" tight on loans bought by the government-sponsored enterprises, according to a chief housing adviser at the White House.

The majority of first-time homebuyers plan to skip the starter-home step and move straight into the home that would meet their long-term needs, according to the Homebuyer Insights Report from Bank of America.

The agency's insurance-rate cut could spur the rehab of thousands of affordable units, but it's far from a total solution, housing advocates say.

Third Federal Savings and Loan in Cleveland has long offered mortgage refinancing in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Now it plans to offer purchase loans in those states.

JPMorgan Chase has agreed to sell its U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Development mortgage origination business to Freedom Mortgage of Mount Laurel, N.J.

The government agency that guarantees securitizations of Federal Housing Administration-insured loans is testing a pool type that consists only of modified and reperforming loans.

Enterprise Bancorp in Lowell, Mass., has purchased the site of a former hotel that recently burned to the ground and plans to put a new branch there.

Bankers are fighting back against a plan that would allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to invest in low-income housing tax credits, arguing they are critical for meeting Community Reinvestment Act requirements.

Five policy heavy-hitters issued a proposal this week to merge Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into a single government corporation as a way to move beyond the conservatorships of the two government-sponsored enterprises.

Two senior GOP lawmakers are warning regulators against preferential treatment for housing advocates and nonprofits in sales of nonperforming, government-guaranteed mortgages.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency appears poised finally to allow principal reductions, but it's been nearly a decade since the mortgage crisis and underwater borrowers are much fewer thanks to higher home values.

ChoiceOne Financial Services in Sparta, Mich., will begin work on remodeling its bank's headquarters in May.

The agency may finally be reaching resolution on whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will allow principal reductions, two years into Director Mel Watt's tenure as agency director and nearly a decade after the mortgage bubble burst.