Servicing

Black Knight Financial Services finished yearend loan processing on a record 41 million loans last month.

As rising home values make it harder to profit by converting foreclosures to rentals, institutional investors turn to lower-priced markets and finance smaller players.

But the dollar volume of newly delinquent loans is $200 million more than in December.

Profits from flipping houses surged last year, but if prices stabilize as expected, this activity could level off.

A lender promises to be “ready to close" loans within 15 business days of receiving an appraisal—a far cry from where the mortgage industry once imagined it was heading.

Signs of a strong housing market are evident in Nassau and Suffolk County, N.Y., with foreclosure sales and months of available housing inventory both low.

The new name is easy to remember and not an acronym.

Hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgage-fraud settlements are providing a windfall to state attorneys general—and creating a new class of political winners and losers.

Foreclosure starts ended the year at the lowest level since April 2007 and pipelines are clearing in most states.

FHA officials believe lenders will qualify more borrowers with sub-680 credit scores via manual underwriting, but there is concern they will simply limit originations to plain-vanilla FHA.