Mortgages

Fresh questions are being asked about the role of investors in the rental market and how their eventual exit may impact mortgage lending, property values and the economic recovery.

Amid heartbreaking tales told by distressed homeowners and reverse mortgage holders, many community groups praised OneWest CEO Joseph Otting for spending time speaking to them and hearing their communities' concerns.

The Federal Housing Administration's recent premium reduction is undercutting the private sector and expanding the government's role in the housing market, housing finance industry representatives told a House subcommittee on Thursday.

Problems related to loan servicing dominate the consumer complaints about mortgage companies made to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, but an agency official expressed optimism about the industry's response to these grievances.

One in three struggling homeowners who received a loan modification through the Home Affordable Modification Program ultimately redefaulted on those loan.Meanwhile, the program that was supposed to help some 4 million families avoid foreclosure has helped only a fraction of that amount, according to a report presented to Congress.

San Francisco-based Sindeo is trying to bring the mortgage brokerage business into the future, creating a new online service that focuses on helping consumers navigate the often confusing mortgage process from start to finish.

The heightened regulatory environment for servicers has also prompted a wave of process improvements.

American Banker’s Index of Banking Activity hit a three-year low in January as falling oil prices and harsh winter weather tamped down borrowing.

It's easy for banks to spin their wheels on local reinvestment, financial education and other efforts to help underserved communities. To make outreach programs successful, bank executives need to carefully vet nonprofit and other partners, listen to their employees on the front lines and reflect on their own reasons for getting into banking.

It's not quite too big to fail, but Ocwen is the country's largest servicer of subprime mortgages. So if it were forced to sell itself, or even failed, the transfer of some $410 billion in servicing rights could create havoc in the mortgage market, industry experts said.

Most millennials do almost all of their other business on a portable device, so they want to have this same functionality when buying a home.

New Residential Investment Corp., a U.S. real estate investment trust, agreed to buy Home Loan Servicing Solutions Ltd. for about $1.3 billion.

Ocwen Financial has tentatively agreed to sell a mortgage-servicing portfolio on $9.8 billion of loans to Nationstar Mortgage Holdings, and Ocwen hinted that more deals may be in the offing.

CFPB officials are keeping a close watch on the Qualified Mortgage and ability-to-repay rules to gauge whether further changes should be made. But mortgage numbers don't give a clear picture on what kind of impact they've had.

Freddie Mac will return $900 million to the Treasury Department next month, bringing total payments to nearly $21 billion above what it received in federal aid after the 2008 credit crisis.

Foreclosures and delinquencies may seem like problems from the past, but servicers are still struggling with a massive backlog of distressed loans and a return to normalcy is at least two years away, if not longer.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who forced Wall Street's biggest banks to pay billions in fines for their roles in the subprime mortgage crisis, is pressing for action against executives at those firms, even as he prepares to leave his post.

Just three years ago, CEO David Nelms heralded the purchase of LendingTree Loans as a milestone in Discover's evolution from a strict credit-card company to a broad-based consumer lender. Now he is hinting that it might exit the mortgage business.

Lenders including Bank of America and Citigroup are accelerating their sales of soured U.S. mortgages as investment firms compete to buy the debt.

Lenders are seeing higher demand for homes but are expecting only modest growth in sales this year due to the limited housing stock.