Mortgages

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.

JPMorgan Chase & Co., the second-largest servicer of U.S. mortgages, is buying the right to handle $45 billion of home loans from Ocwen Financial Corp., according to a person familiar with the transaction.

Lending groups are demanding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau take down its mortgage rate calculator, arguing it is providing misleading information to consumers.

An expected rush of refinancings of Federal Housing Administration loans could force some mortgage servicers to take writedowns in the first and second quarters, but they have more incentive than ever to keep borrowers in the FHA program instead of letting rivals lure away their customers.

Ed DeMarco, the former chief regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, warned that efforts under the Obama administration to expand access to credit could risk repeating mistakes that led up to the crisis.

It's not just about cutting lawns and patching holes. To convey a foreclosed property into the Department of Housing and Urban Development's ownership, servicers are on the hook for every last detail of a vacant house. Here are five key pieces of the preservation puzzle.

Negative attitudes in Washington toward the mortgage industry are starting to thaw, yet devising Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's exit from conservatorship or charting the future of housing finance reform still will be tough.

Fannie Mae selected a chief internal auditor with an "inherent conflict of interest" and the mortgage giant's process for filling the position was faulty, according to a watchdog report to be released Wednesday.

Telecommuting isn't new for front-office loan officers, but in an increasingly competitive hiring environment, some mortgage lenders now let their underwriters work from home, too.

Lucrative sale of a subprime lending unit. Big credit card deal. Clear business plan. It's looking like a good year for Citi — provided it passes the CCAR stress test this week and fills a key executive post.

KeyCorp has been getting back into full-scale residential lending as part of a broader strategy to deepen client relationships. The market's shift toward purchase activity and defined mortgage rules also played a role.

Michael Stegman, a top housing policy adviser, urged regulators on Thursday to bring more private capital into the market, even in the absence of legislative momentum.

More than half of borrowers with home equity lines of credit that will reset this year have seriously underwater properties, and that risk is likely to grow further next year.