Compliance & Regulation

Some mortgage investors are refusing to buy home loans that are at risk of violations of new consumer-disclosure rules. The problem appears to be worst among nonagency jumbo loans purchased by private investors.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has lowered the asset-size threshold to qualify for escrow exemptions for higher-priced mortgage loans.

Rising rates could slow the runoff from refinancings and add stickier purchase loans to servicers' portfolios. That's the good news.

President Obama is expected to sign a bill passed by both the House and Senate that grants extensions on a number of tax benefits enjoyed by individuals and corporations, including a number of temporary provisions that the real estate industry sought.

Multifamily properties are getting pricy and new construction is putting upward pressure on vacancy rates, worrying banking regulators.

Sen. Bob Corker championed a provision he added to the budget bill that would temporarily prevent the Treasury Department from recapitalizing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and discussed other banking priorities in a sitdown interview.

Fannie Mae's final risk-sharing transaction of the year was with reinsurers.

All servicers that are part of the national mortgage settlement — except Ocwen Financial — passed metrics testing in the first half of the year, according to the settlement's monitor.

There could be more willingness among lenders to roll back self-imposed requirements for agency loans in 2016, but secondary-market conditions will be mixed for mortgage sellers while rates and costs are poised to rise.

The Federal Open Markets Committee Wednesday voted to raise federal interest rates from nearly zero for the first time since 2008, meeting market expectations but ushering in a new and uncertain normal for the mortgage industry.