Kate Berry

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.

For at least his first year as head of the Mortgage Bankers Association, David Stevens will be barred from lobbying the federal agency that matters most to many of the trade group's members: the one he's leaving, the Federal Housing Administration.

Real estate agents are stepping up pressure on mortgage servicers to reform the short sale process.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general found "systemic problems" in lenders' compliance with underwriting requirements for Federal Housing Administration loans.

The Center for Responsible Lending late this week weighed in on the 'qualified residential mortgage' debate, saying that a 20% down payment threshold will materially shrink the overall borrower market.

As home lenders fret about a forthcoming regulatory proposal on risk retention, Freddie Mac soon will require a little more skin in the game from their borrowers.

Big banks and Washington aren't on the same page—again.

A California lender began selling jumbo loans this month to global asset manager BlackRock Inc., proof that private investors are not waiting for the securitization market to fully recover before getting back into mortgages.

Wells Fargo & Co. has dramatically lowered credit score requirements for Federal Housing Administration mortgages, the first major lender to do so following pressure from the agency and housing advocates.

Bad: When a newspaper ridicules your CEO for wrongful foreclosures.Worse: When the foreclosure was initiated by another company.

Borrowers that call a hotline to have their loan-mod case reviewed are handed off to a nonprofit group created by a large mortgage servicer and largely funded by the industry.