Lew Sichelman

In the spirit of what he called "participatory regulation," the de facto head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau invited the Mortgage Bankers Association to suggest which areas of housing finance need his agency's immediate attention.

While U.S. lawmakers wrestle with the tax advantages of homeownership, their counterparts in France are doing something about it.

The new chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association called on members of the industry's widely diverse factions to pull together or face the prospect that others will control their destiny.

MortgageKeeper, the database that connects struggling homeowners with qualified local sources of assistance, has snagged another top tier servicer.

John Robbins, the ageless former chairman of the Mortgage Bankers Association, is partnering with holding company Bexil Corp. to develop Bexil American Mortgage, a new residential lender that will focus on both retail and wholesale channels.

About 1,500 protesters are expected to picket the Mortgage Banker Association's annual convention in Chicago Monday afternoon as part of the growing anti-Wall Street movement.

When it comes to repossessing property, it's once again pedal to the metal for lenders in South Florida.

The tax code may be broken, but now's not the time to fix it, at least as it pertains to the mortgage interest deduction and other write-offs afforded home owners, witnesses testified at a Senate hearing on tax reform options.

The good news: More than 43,200 condominium apartments have been sold in South Florida's coastal markets since the real estate boom began in earnest in 2003. The bad news: Most of the buyers are not primary users.

The executive who helped build one of the world's leading real estate investment platforms at Morgan Stanley has landed in Miami, where he will oversee one of the country's largest home builder's workout business.

Aside from the inertia in Congress, Washington is looking good. The Washington area housing market, that is.

The SAFE Act and the Nationwide Mortgage Licensing System & Registry it codified were supposed to result in some consistency, if not standardization, in the way originators are supervised on the state level.

Housing starts surged in California during August, thanks largely to a huge jump in the multifamily sector.

The housing finance sector will have to wait until next year for the final rule on what constitutes a 'qualified residential mortgage,' the unofficial head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau told a regulatory forum in Washington.

The chief author of the Dodd-Frank Financial Reform Act took exception to what he called "the revolt against risk retention," saying requiring originators to hold 5% of the loan amount on their books is "one of the central things we did in the bill."

Wanted: 520 mortgage professionals – and the man doing the hiring is former DiTech chief Paul Reddam.

A dozen local housing markets have shown enough improvement over the last six months to make the cut for a new "good news" index the National Association of Home Builders hopes will take some of the spotlight off national measures that tend to portray only gloom and doom.

Last week, we reported in this space that a construction crane, the state bird of Florida, had landed in the Miami area. The crane hasn't been seen in these parts in several years, and some were saying it should be added to the endangered species list, if not named as extinct. Now, it appears a whole flock is returning.

The Washington and Baltimore markets closed out the summer home buying season with their best August in years, according to a pending sales index devised by the local multiple listing service.

Jane C. King, the Queen of renovation lending, will head up Platinum Home Mortgage Corp.'s new correspondent lending division as division vice president.