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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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 -
Large banks, including JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo, credited a pickup in mortgage banking returns for helping boost their quarterly revenue.
April 27 -
The past is coming back to haunt former Fannie Mae chief executive James A. Johnson.
April 24 -
Raj Date, the deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the agency wants to avoid creating "disincentives" for mortgage lenders and banks as part of the qualified mortgage rule.
April 23 -
Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said he is "deeply concerned" about underwater borrowers, but added that forbearance plans and short sales already serve as forms of principal reduction without saddling taxpayers with further losses.
April 20 -
Comptroller of the Currency Thomas Curry this week urged eligible borrowers to sign up for the OCC's foreclosure-review process, and suggested that homeowners who didn't like the results would still be able to sue their mortgage servicers later.
April 20 -
New York Community Bancorp on Wednesday posted a 76% first-quarter jump in mortgage banking revenue from a year earlier, as the Westbury, N.Y., bank saw robust growth in multi-family and commercial real estate loans.
April 19 -
A Federal Reserve rule has sown widespread confusion about the way lenders pay housing appraisers, creating turmoil in an industry already burdened by expensive middlemen, falling home prices and diminished ranks.
April 18 -
A federal judge rejected an attempt by the Securities and Exchange Commission to compel Wells Fargo & Co. to comply with an administrative subpoena, ordering the agency and the bank to meet to resolve their dispute over documents related to the agency's investigation of nearly $60 billion of residential mortgage-backed securities.
March 30 -
The largest banks are charging relatively high interest rates to borrowers that qualify for a government refinance program, according to analysts, who say that the trend bodes well for mortgage profits in the second quarter.
March 29 -
Wells Fargo & Co., the nation's largest residential lender, is trying a new twist on long-controversial downpayment assistance programs, which give money to prospective borrowers who otherwise could not afford to buy homes.
March 27
