Compliance & Regulation

By effectively using technology to gather and verify big data, lenders can underwrite with greater precision, improve loan-level decision making and maximize the integrity of their mortgage portfolios.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a regulatory mandate to shrink. But that's easier said than done, given the GSEs' outsized presence in the mortgage industry, as their latest quarterly results show.

Four more Federal Home Loan Banks have won regulatory approval to participate in a program that allows member institutions to sell jumbo mortgage loans through a conduit to Redwood Trust.

It was a small deal — about 220 U.S. home loans packaged into a $72 million bond offering — but it's looking like a post-crisis milestone.

Banks that sold faulty mortgage-backed securities right before the crisis have suffered a string of legal defeats over the timing of government lawsuits, but some experts believe the industry may still have a shot in the Supreme Court.

In 1979, mortgage bankers worried that they could be undercut by "sleeping giants" like Merrill Lynch, Sears Roebuck and what was then called Master Charge.

Neighborhood Watch, the Federal Housing Administration's "early warning system" for monitoring mortgage defaults and lender performance, crashed more than two weeks ago and it's unclear when the service will be restored.

Just 8% of U.S. mortgage origination volume in the second quarter went to borrowers with subprime credit scores, according to new research by the New York Fed. The findings suggest that mortgage standards have loosened only slightly, if at all.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is expected to issue a proposal soon that would require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to purchase manufactured housing loans from lenders.

Homeownership is out of reach for too many Americans. The next president could change that with a few simple policies aimed at encouraging private capital to invest in residential mortgages.