Compliance & Regulation

A new Office of Comptroller of the Currency survey will give home builders and Realtors more reason to complain that banks are continuing to tightened their underwriting standards and choke off credit to homebuyers.

GNMA executive Christopher Haspel is, more or less, a household name to lenders and servicers that deal with the government agency, and soon will be wearing a new hat—that of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Over the last several decades, we have engaged in a financial experiment, or adventure, of exploding agency debt relative to Treasury securities.

The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act case whose outcome could shield banks and other lenders from litigation under a wide range of federal and state laws.

Robert J. Shiller, a Yale University economist and the namesake of the closely watched Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller home price indexes, has been called overly pessimistic for predicting home prices could fall another 25%.

WASHINGTON—The cost of being a Federal Housing Administration-approved lender is making it difficult for many small lenders to retain their ability to table-fund FHA loans.

Morgan Keegan & Co. Inc. will pay $200 million in restitution to subprime and mortgage-related bond fund investors to settle multi-regulator enforcement proceedings related to improper marketing and insufficient disclosures.

A coalition of 44 industry, consumer, community development andcivil rights groups have banded together to oppose a regulatory proposal on risk retention that they claim would increase the cost of mortgage credit for average Americans and goes beyond the intent of Congress.

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC will pay $153.6 million to settle Securities and Exchange Commission allegations that it misled investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet.

The risk retention proposal drafted by federal regulators is likely to hinder the development of a private securitization market and make it harder to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to a new paper by Moody's Analytics.