Mortgages

Large mortgage servicers continued to shed delinquencies as overall loan performance improved in the fourth quarter, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Friday.

Wells Fargo announced the closure of a mortgage servicing site and the retirement of a longtime commercial banking executive Wednesday.

The Justice Department's Clifford White is putting all mortgage servicers on notice that they too will be punished if they flout bankruptcy rules.

Subprime auto lending has become a top priority for the CFPB, said Steven Antonakes, the agency's deputy director on Wednesday. He also revealed that it was open to making changes to its complaint portal, which the agency recently said would allow consumers to post detailed narratives of their problems with financial institutions.

The leader of the Senate Banking Committee said he'd rather leave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in U.S. conservatorship than pass a bill that includes explicit government support for the housing market.

There are a lot of consumer, investor and regulatory complaints about how the nonbank servicing firm does business, but Morgan Stanley researchers offer reasons why certain investors and borrowers could benefit from sticking with Ocwen.

If you thought the subprime mortgage-backed security was an artifact of the past, think again. Nomura Holdings and Angel Oak Capital have a deal that may help revive the part of the market that went bust during the crisis. Their success could encourage more banks to dip their toes back into riskier mortgages.

Ocwen Financial is fighting back against a group of large bondholders that have accused the Atlanta mortgage servicer of improper servicing practices and an alleged breach of trust.

Ocwen Financial Corp. said investors in mortgage-backed securities who criticized its servicing policies are trying to force more foreclosures.

Freddie Mac is selling more than $1 billion of soured U.S. home loans in its largest sale of the debt. Potential buyers are bidding on three pools of nonperforming loans, with unpaid principal balances of about $660 million, $249 million and $125 million.

Bank of New York Mellon is building out a new investment firm with the mortgage specialist Amherst Holdings. The move is its second major commitment to a fixed income-related fund this year.

Citigroup's failure to pay 24,000 people owed money as part of a settlement with the government over foreclosure abuses has prompted Maxine Waters, the senior Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, to call for an investigation into whether banks missed other borrowers.

The agency's interpretation of a Respa rule could put an end to the long-standing practice of mortgage lenders paying real estate agents and homebuilders to send business their way.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau finalized a contentious policy Thursday allowing customers to describe their banking experiences more fully on the agency's complaint portal.

If successful, Provident Bank in Massachusetts and Cincinnati Federal in Ohio would become the first new mutual holding companies since 2011, giving some hope that the structure could make a comeback.

Ocwen Financial has delayed filing its 2014 results and announced the sale of more servicing rights.

Hoping to deliver relief to Americans pounded by the financial crisis, the government has poured billions of dollars into NeighborWorks America, a sort of Red Cross for homeowners. But a close look at the group reveals a house in disorder — with sweetheart contracts, document fudging and unexplained departures of top officials.

Mortgage default rates remained largely unchanged in February amidst mixed results nationwide, according to data released by S&P Dow Jones Indices and Experian.

An outage that crippled the Internal Revenue Service's ability to process 4506-T forms for nearly two weeks has been resolved, but the capacity constraints in the tax transcript service are an ongoing challenge for the mortgage industry.