Mortgages

BankUnited of Miami Lakes, Fla., has exited the retail mortgage origination channel. It originated loans through its retail banking branches in Florida and New York.

U.S. lawmakers called for federal investigations into Clayton Homes, the mobile-home business at Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, after the Seattle Times and BuzzFeed News wrote that the company targeted minority borrowers and charged them higher interest rates on average than whites.

President Obama's administration, citing concern about the origin of funds used for all-cash purchases of luxury real estate, said it is stepping up scrutiny of transactions in New York City and Miami.

Independent mortgage lenders are expecting a wave of consolidation prompted by excessive compliance costs, a tepid housing recovery and the need for more capital to grow their businesses. Roughly 20% to 25% of independent companies could be eliminated or change hands in less than two years.

Mortgage loan officers have gotten a lot of referral business through formal marketing services agreements. Now that these agreements have come under regulatory scrutiny, referrals are going to depend even more heavily on providing real estate agents and consumers with the best mortgage experience, as a means to generate word-of-mouth marketing.

Community bankers and credit unions scored a significant victory while others in the mortgage industry lost out in the Federal Housing Finance Agency's final rule establishing membership standards for the Home Loan banks.

The agency scrapped a part of its 2014 proposal that would have required Home Loan bank members to maintain a certain percentage of residential mortgage assets in order to keep their membership. But it held fast on a provision that would disqualify captive insurance firms from membership.

Consumers increasingly fell behind on their payments in several loan categories in the third quarter as economic growth cooled.

Eagle Bancorp in Bethesda, Md., has hired four bankers to a develop a business line making Federal Housing Administration-insured loans for multifamily rental properties.

A recent tax change will provide more stability to banks and developers that use the low-income housing tax credit program, and the supply of below-market-rate apartments should increase as a result. But it's not enough to create the economic incentives needed to meet skyrocketing demand for affordable housing in the U.S.