Mark Fogarty

There will be enough grist for the NPL mill for at least three more years, industry insiders say.

Proposed reforms for Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae seem to be bogged down in the House and Senate. It might be time for legislators to start thinking about different solutions.

A roundup of comments on our Editor at Large blog, from the best and brightest to the not-so-bright.

The proposed federal mortgage guarantor in the Senate reform bill needs 5% hard equity to protect taxpayers, but 10% capital to pass Congress, the Housing Policy Council's John Dalton reckons.

As servicers began modifying staggering numbers of mortgages, they took control and implemented stringent underwriting practices that will serve as a model for all mortgage underwriting in the future.

The Senate GSE reform bill may bloat the bureaucracy, encourage risky behavior and expose taxpayers to losses, without sufficient support for affordable housing. That could still be better than nothing.

Lenders and Realtors are hailing a new law that delays flood insurance premium increases, but unless the government takes actuarially prudent measures, rising sea levels could cost taxpayers dearly.

Jose Gonzalez, the first Hispanic president of a Federal Home Loan Bank, envisions eventually allowing new categories of lenders like REITs to join the system, but wants membership to stay as it is for now.

Charlie Keating, who died Tuesday, epitomized an era today's mortgage lenders would do well to remember as low-yielding portfolio assets tempt them to take bigger risks.

There's been froth in the U.S. housing markets in recent years. But a drop in activity this year means a bubble won't be a problem for 2014.

Farmers have been benefiting from steady increases in commodity prices in recent years, partly driven by extreme weather. But the underpinnings of that growth seem to be on the wane.

The best thing to happen to the business over the last three decades was the development of the secondary agencies' automated underwriting engines. The worst? There are several strong contenders….

Borrowing short and lending long, which crashed the thrift market in the 1980s, and lowering underwriting standards, which crashed the mortgage market in the last decade, are rearing their heads again.

The Affordable Housing and Community Investment programs of the Federal Home Loan Banks provide important gap financing to support other sources of financing for affordable housing.

At least one mortgage category in North Dakota has fewer delinquent borrowers than graduates in my high school class. A lot fewer.

Government mortgage programs for this country's more than six million Native people are accelerating home loan credit access to this underserved group of people. But seemingly intractable housing problems endure.

Jumbo mortgages currently are yielding less than agency loans, and there are other anomalies you can see in the business if you look closely.

It's clear regulation has replaced credit risk as the industry's top worry. Here are some suggestions for dealing with the new environment from attendees at this week's MBA servicing conference.

Thousands of lenders post oceans of data each year to meet Home Mortgage Disclosure Act obligations. There may be more reporting requirements coming. Will the value of the new transparency outweigh the added compliance burden to lenders?

The mortgage industry has always been an adrenaline junkie, getting its thrills by riding the highest roller coaster it can find and hoping the landing will be soft this time. What if you could smooth out the highs and the lows?