Servicing

A seemingly optimistic survey showing 68% of all respondents, or seven out of 10 homeowners and six out of 10 renters, agree it is a good or very good time to buy a house does not mean much for the housing market recovery—at least for the present.

Reverse Mortgage Solutions believes mortgage brokers may be the big winners from Bank of America and Wells Fargo exiting the reverse mortgage lending arena.

Housing is "extremely important to the President," a key White House advisor told the Mortgage Bankers Annual convention in Chicago.

Equifax is teaming up with Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. to offer insurance coverage for lenders that have been stung by loan repurchase requests where hidden debts were involved.

Since being seized by the government during the financial crisis, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven't been businesses so much as government-owned mortgage utilities. That status was supposed to be temporary, but three years later, lawmakers have shown little appetite for changing it.

Royal Credit Union, Eau Claire, Wisc., has agreed to acquire 4,200 mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $600 million from a failed Minnesota bank called The RiverBank. No purchase price was disclosed.

In what is described as the first step in rebuilding the housing finance industry's tarnished image, the Mortgage Bankers Association has created a non-profit umbrella organization to support philanthropic ventures that help families and communities.

Hundreds of demonstrators picketed outside the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention in Chicago Monday afternoon and despite stepped up security, two made it into the convention's second general session, where they personally voiced their disapproval of lenders and how they are handling the mortgage crisis.

The likely dominant product in a mortgage market without a government-backed guarantee will be a three- to five-year adjustable rate loan with a prepayment penalty, according to one industry official speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association's annual convention in Chicago.

In the spirit of what he called "participatory regulation," the de facto head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau invited the Mortgage Bankers Association to suggest which areas of housing finance need his agency's immediate attention.