Clifford Rossi

Mortgage servicing rights are one of the most notoriously volatile assets in financial markets. The Federal Reserve's plan to loosen their capital treatment could foretell major problems in the future.

The historic election has presented an opportunity for a comprehensive overhaul of the housing finance system after eight years of gridlock.

Despite headwinds working against the mortgage insurance industry, this business could be the catalyst for bringing private capital back to the mortgage market.

Making the GSEs out to be the villains of the mortgage crisis is an easy sell to a fearful and angry public, but doesn’t make it true. Partly due to this mindset, housing markets remain held hostage.

The proposed Small Lender Mutual cooperative would be expensive for small firms to capitalize, and its securities may get inferior pricing compared to those issued by large banks and nonbanks.

Lenders' choices today are stark: Make Qualified Mortgage loans and risk being sued under the disparate-impact doctrine; make non-QM loans and risk being sued under the ability-to-pay-doctrine; or sell their loans to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's qualified mortgage rules and the agency's intention to pursue disparate impact claims expose mortgage lenders to enormous regulatory and legal risk.

Buried in the Corker-Warner reform bill are two provisions that would give the Federal Home Loan banks an opportunity to play a major role in the new housing finance system.

Recriminations about what caused the greatest mortgage meltdown in U.S. history continue to play out in various ways.

Recriminations about what caused the greatest mortgage meltdown in U.S. history continue to play out in various ways.

The roots of the mortgage crisis stretch back to 1996 with the introduction of Freddie Mac’s Loan Prospector and Fannie Mae's Desktop Underwriter automated underwriting systems.