Mortgages

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.

In a wide-ranging interview, the head of the Cleveland Fed talks about her support for a two-tiered regulatory system, the biggest threats facing the system, interest-rate risk, culture and cybersecurity.

The jobs eliminated were reportedly in Bank of America's Legacy Asset Servicing business, which provides services to customers at risk of foreclosure.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren said community banks have continued to be profitable despite new rules under the Dodd-Frank Act while raising fresh warnings about unnecessary changes to the financial reform law in the guise of regulatory relief.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took action Thursday against three mortgage companies that, authorities say, falsely implied affiliation with the U.S. government.

GOP lawmakers on Wednesday harshly criticized the Federal Housing Administration's recent move to lower insurance premiums, saying it violates the law and will be used to entice borrowers into predatory loans.

In unusually expansive comments, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray provided new details Tuesday about proposals due soon from the agency while offering insights into an internal battle over easing a key mortgage rule.

WASHINGTON — NewDay Financial has agreed to a $2 million fine after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged that the mortgage lender engaged in an improper kickback scheme and used deceptive marketing tactics targeted at veterans.

Wilshire Bancorp in Los Angeles has agreed to buy Manhattan Bancorp's mortgage lending division.