Origination

Quicken Loans Inc., Detroit, funded $10.7 billion of home mortgages in the fourth quarter, a 14% gain from the same period a year ago.

As Rep. Scott Garrett seeks to pass the first significant financial reform law since the Dodd-Frank Act, a lot of forces are aligned against him.

A proposal by the Obama administration to help more struggling borrowers refinance into cheaper loans is prompting questions: Could it prompt an increase in interest rates, after a long period of low rates? And is this a program that can relieve the housing crunch, or just another Band-Aid?

Commercial banks have experienced an increase in demand for commercial real estate loans since October, according to a Federal Reserve survey released Monday afternoon.

Economists at Fiserv expect rising home sales will lead to higher values in half of all U.S. metropolitan areas over the 12-month period ending September 30.

Facebook is about to go public. Whoopee! Here's how an IPO works: all the private equity firms that have been funding a startup's operations get to cash out, recovering their seed money and then some. I'm not a Facebook user, but I get the model, though my doubts about the company stem from this basic belief: what's to prevent a bunch of low-cost competitors from offering the same service?

Have you ever had a situation where a friend, neighbor or family member got their mortgage from another lender? They like and respect you, but someone else asked for their business and got it. Sometimes we don't take the vital step of asking, simply because we can't think of an appropriate way to phrase the question.

When Bank of America and Wells Fargo exited the reverse lending space last year there were concerns that liquidity might dry up, but don't tell that to the sector's "survivors" who are now feasting on all the market share the two banking giants ceded.

The Treasury Department late Friday unveiled a new plan to expand the Home Affordable Modification Program by increasing the incentive fees it pays investors -- including Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- for agreeing to reduce the principal amount of a mortgage.

I watched the State of the Union speech Tuesday and came away thinking no real "mortgage" surprises tonight except for two: Obama not using the word "mortgage broker" once, and the formation of the DOJ fraud task force on securitizing loans. But what about the "The State of the Mortgage Union"?