Kate Berry

Two independent mortgage banks agreed to settlements in the past week with the Justice Department for failing to meet Federal Housing Administration guidelines. The cases are a warning to nonbank lenders that they need to beef up self-reporting of deficiencies, and they remind large banks about the legal risks associated with FHA lending.

There are no easy fixes to Nationstar's myriad problems — including a plunging stock price and increased regulatory scrutiny — but Chief Executive Jay Bray says the turnaround starts with a commitment to improving customer service.

Kal Raman has resigned as president and chief executive of Xome, the digital platform of the nonbank mortgage servicer Nationstar Mortgage Holdings.

Anticipation of rising interest rates has stirred more talk among mortgage lenders about the need to originate loans to borrowers with low credit scores.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said Wednesday that conforming loan limits for mortgages purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will remain at existing levels except in 39 high-cost counties.

Bryan Sullivan, the CFO at LoanDepot, talks about its growth prospects without fuel from an initial public offering, how getting consumers to opt for home equity lines of credit is tough, and why he considers the nonbank a disruptor.

Prospect Mortgage, a Sherman Oaks, Calif., nonbank lender, has agreed to pay $10.1 million in borrower restitution and penalties for violating federal and state laws, California's Department of Business Oversight said Thursday.

Luther Burbank Savings, in Santa Rosa, Calif., has established three home loan programs aimed at helping low- and moderate-income borrowers afford to buy homes in nine California counties.

Freddie Mac Chief Executive Donald Layton insisted Tuesday that the government-sponsored enterprise showed "very strong fundamentals" in the third quarter, despite reporting a $501 million loss due to an accounting mismatch with its use of derivatives.

Freddie Mac posted a third quarter loss of $501 million, its first quarterly loss in four years, but the government-sponsored enterprise will not request a draw from the U.S. Treasury.

The government-sponsored enterprise is working to rebuild partnerships with church organizations and housing financing agencies as part of a broader effort to make owning a home affordable for low- and moderate-income families.

Bank of America has agreed to pay $335 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it misled shareholders about risky mortgages and its dependence on the electronic mortgage registry known as MERS.

The CFPB’s expanded data requirements for the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act will create a powerful tool for analyzing fair lending compliance. But some say the initiative is a massive overreach that could compromise borrower privacy.

Mortgage servicer Ocwen Financial failed four servicing tests in the second half of 2014. Joseph A. Smith Jr., the monitor of the $25 billion national mortgage settlement, said the Atlanta servicer was “beginning to show progress” in complying with terms of the 2012 agreement.

Housing finance reform in Congress is stalled, but Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (often under pressure from their regulator) are forming partnerships, developing new products and finding ways to share risk with the private sector to correct flaws in the housing system.

Mortgage servicers have gotten a rare reprieve from the Federal Housing Administration.

Next year Fannie will require that mortgage lenders use so-called trended credit data for all mortgage borrowers, a move it says could broaden access to credit.

Profit margins in JPMorgan Chase's mortgage banking unit were down in the third quarter, primarily due to the shift in the mix from refinance activity to home purchases, and from retail loan originations to correspondent lending.

It's hard to decide which is more surprising: that the largest U.S. bank has almost abandoned the business of making home loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, that lots of big banks could be right behind it, or that the FHA might not even need to care.

Wells Fargo is raising minimum credit score requirements on Federal Housing Administration loans, part of the ongoing jockeying by large banks to limit lawsuits by the Justice Department for defective FHA loans.