Kate Berry has covered the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for American Banker since 2016. She joined the publication in 2006 covering mortgage lending and the financial crisis. Berry also has covered big banks including Bank of America, J.P. Morgan Chase and Wells Fargo. She has won five awards from the Society of American Business Writers and Editors, and has worked at several news organizations including the Orange County Register, the Los Angeles Business Journal and the Associated Press. Berry began her career as a clerk at the New York Times.
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Three California local governments may use their eminent domain powers to seize mortgages and restructure them to help distressed borrowers stay in their homes, much to the dismay of investors who hold the mortgages.
July 6 -
Attorney Robert Maddox, who represents Ally Financial, calls the landmark foreclosure settlement earlier this year "a Trojan horse for the government to fix perceived problems in mortgage servicing" but others dispute the view that the punishment was too severe.
July 2 -
David H. Stevens, the president and chief executive of the Mortgage Bankers Association, will remain at the trade group rather than departing to run SunTrust Mortgage, as he announced plans to do a month ago.
July 2 -
CitiMortgage has introduced a reduced mortgage payment program for qualifying servicemembers who have to permanently relocate and need immediate financial relief.
June 29 -
Six out of 10 homeowners who received a loan modification stopped paying their mortgage again after 18 months, but there may be a modest silver lining buried in the high recidivism rates.
June 22 -
As wards of the same federal conservator, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rarely diverge these days, but when they do it speaks volumes about where the two companies are headed.
June 14 -
Occupy protesters have vowed to return to an empty foreclosed home in south Minneapolis after holding two protests in the past month.
June 12 -
For the past two years, Valley National Bancorp in Wayne, N.J., has touted its $499 home refinance program in New Jersey and Pennsylvania—but there is fine print.
June 8 -
As head of the Mortgage Bankers Association, David H. Stevens spent the last year warning that excessive and ill-considered regulation could drag down the mortgage market. As the new head of SunTrust Mortgage, he'll have to face that regulation head-on.
June 5 -
Newly initiated foreclosures by the Federal Housing Administration jumped 247% in April from a year earlier, while the overall number of foreclosure starts fell 3.1% in the same period.
June 1 -
Lending by the 25 largest banks for single-family loans has exploded so far this quarter, rising $11.2 billion, or at an annualized pace of 56%, to a non-seasonally adjusted basis of $4 trillion for the week ended May 9, according to recent figures published by the Federal Reserve.
May 29 -
As the Litigation Compliance Law Center explained during a May 10 webinar, it was offering to pay finders' fees to mortgage brokers for recruiting homeowners who themselves paid a $5,000 up-front "retainer" to affiliated attorneys.
May 25 -
Banks are doing what they can to avoid depressing home prices, by focusing on reducing foreclosures rather than flooding the market with their backlog of properties, according to CoreLogic chief economist Mark Fleming.
May 23 -
Bank servicers are doing what they can to avoid depressing home prices, by focusing on reducing foreclosures rather than flooding the market with their backlog of properties.
May 22 -
Competition is heating up among banks in the government's revised Home Affordable Refinance Program, which has helped spark a refi boom and contributed to strong mortgage profits at most banks.
May 18 -
Wells Fargo plans to give its underwriters more control in approving mortgages that it retains in its own portfolio, as the bank tries to add high-quality assets to its balance sheet.
May 11 -
Freddie Mac's new chief executive, Donald Layton, urged critics to keep an open mind about the troubled government-sponsored enterprise and pledged to focus on "the nuts and bolts" to improve efficiency.
May 11 -
Competition is heating up among banks in the government's revised Home Affordable Refinance Program, which has helped spark a refi boom and contributed to strong mortgage profits at most banks.
May 9 -
Wells Fargo plans to give its underwriters more control in approving mortgages that it retains in its own portfolio, as the bank tries to add high-quality assets to its balance sheet.
May 2 -
A surge in mortgage lending drove strong profits for banks of all sizes in the first quarter, with some banks attributing the improvement to new regulations.
April 30
