Servicing

The North Texas region has been a hub for mortgage servicing for decades, dating back to the oil bust and savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Today, some key players and many smaller ones remain firmly entrenched in the area.

They're called "zombie properties" — dilapidated, abandoned and overgrown with weeds because the lending institutions inheriting them through foreclosure fail to maintain them.

Nationally, the overall denial rate on a conventional loan was 12.4%, Zillow found after studying 2013 data lenders reported under the U.S. Housing Mortgage Disclosure Act.

Delinquencies of new commercial mortgage-backed securities finished January at a post-recession low, according to Fitch Ratings.

Essent Group closed out its first full year as a public company in the black, as increased premiums continued to fuel profitability.

Lenders including Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are accelerating their sales of soured U.S. mortgages as investment firms compete to buy the debt.

Mortgage professional hiring and new job appointments for the week ending Feb. 13.

Bank repossessions increased in January across South Florida, a welcome sign that more distressed properties are clearing a crowded court system, a new report shows.

About 1,000 servicemembers are eligible to receive more than $123 million from five mortgage service companies as compensation for unlawful home foreclosures, the Justice Department announced.

Amid a growing investor appetite for risk, efforts to standardize private-label securities are key to helping ensure the market's healthy return.