Compliance & Regulation

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's decisions to make their automated underwriting systems free to use will feed more data to the GSEs, but do little to better serve lenders and borrowers.

The new supplemental performance metric should encourage lenders to serve lower credit score borrowers.

The Federal Housing Administration's Neighborhood Watch website is back online after crashing about three weeks ago.

The Houston housing market still runs the risk of a pullback, based on a range of economic conditions affecting the city, according to Fitch Ratings.

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.