Kate Berry

A drop in mortgage lending volumes to the lowest level in over a decade is forcing lenders to consider new cost cuts and staff reductions. The lack of activity comes despite a boost from low interest rates that has sparked a wave of refinancings, and is prompting lenders to face the prospect that refis and home purchases may remain moribund for an extended period.

For less than $200 up front, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley might have saved themselves a combined $22 million, and a whole lot of embarrassment.

Bank of America Corp. will pay $20 million and Morgan Stanley $2.35 million for improperly foreclosing on members of the military — some of whom were on active duty in Iraq and Afghanistan — under a settlement with the Justice Department.

A significant sector of the housing market is still being driven by sales of bank-owned homes and those in some stage of foreclosure, according to a new report from Realtytrac Inc.

The Federal Housing Administration is getting tougher on paying claims for defaulted loans where it believes lenders have cut corners on the underwriting.

As home prices fall again and regulatory reforms take hold, long-simmering tensions between mortgage lenders and appraisers are flaring up anew.

A new report, "Paying More for The American Dream V," by a group of nonprofit housing advocacy organizations, finds evidence that banks may be engaging in redlining on refinance loans in communities of color.

When Noel Watts, the vice president of mortgage banking at Marshall & Ilsley Bank, set out to upgrade the lender's origination platform two years ago, he expected interest rates to rise and mortgage volume to plummet.

The recovery prospects for second-lien holders in residential foreclosures keep looking dicier.

The city of Los Angeles filed a civil lawsuit Wednesday against Deutsche Bank, claiming the German bank failed to maintain foreclosed properties and illegally evicted hundreds of low-income renters.

Lenore Albert, a plaintiff's lawyer in Huntington Beach, Calif., says the consent orders federal regulators recently issued against the largest mortgage servicers gave her "another tool" to fight foreclosures.

To many in the industry, federal regulators just gave Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems a big stamp of approval.

Servicers looking for creative ways to stem losses might consider giving hard-up borrowers some old advice: it pays to advertise. Pays the mortgage, that is.

The only bank that has been penalized for mortgage servicing lapses got slapped for doing the opposite of what state attorneys general have been demanding.

After being rejected for a loan modification, Carla Ghosn decided to build a website that would tell borrowers if they qualified for the government's Home Affordable Modification Program.

Despite an 11th-hour reprieve that delayed the Federal Reserve's loan officer compensation rule from taking effect at least until Tuesday, the mortgage industry's chances of overturning the rule are slim.

Among the states, North Dakota will recover most quickly from the housing downturn, according to Tree.com Inc.'s LendingTree.

During the housing boom Robert Shiller, co-creator of the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, stood out (and endured taunting) for his pessimistic views on the market. Now he's in good company. A survey of 111 fellow economists and real estate experts by his firm MacroMarkets LLC found that the outlook for the market "continues to deteriorate," with a surge in expectations for a double-dip in housing prices.

Forthcoming regulations could make conventional mortgages more expensive to the wide swath of homebuyers and owners who can't put 20% down, depressing originations and potentially undermining the housing recovery.

At a time when many mortgage bankers are objecting to the idea of retaining 5% of the credit risk for mortgages they securitize, Union Bank in San Francisco says it has no problem with risk retention.