Risk management

Mortgage originators willing to help consumers overcome traditional financing hurdles can add more emerging segments of home buyers as clients.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Rural Housing Service is raising the cost of its home-loan guarantees that enable borrowers to purchase homes in certain areas without down payments.

Mortgage-fraud risk appears to have normalized, as the overall rate of fraud declined in 2014 and there has been a shift to specific fraud types on the local level, according to Interthinx.

Bankers and commercial real estate developers are protesting new restrictions on construction lending, arguing they are poised to hurt credit availability and drive loans into risky, unregulated sectors.

If you want to know what a Greek exit from the euro would do to the €16.64 billion ($18.54 billion) of bonds out there backed by Greek assets, start with Argentina.

Fannie Mae will no longer charge mortgage lenders to submit loans to its Desktop Underwriter automated underwriting system, a decision that follows a similar move by Freddie Mac earlier this month.

Regulators finalized a rule Monday requiring banks to escrow flood insurance premiums and fees for loans on real estate located in a flood zone.

Many lenders may not have been ready for the CFPB's new mortgage disclosure rule if it took effect on Aug. 1 as planned. Now a slip-up by the agency itself has given lenders a two-month reprieve.

Black and Hispanic home-loan applicants in New York are more than twice as likely to be denied as white applicants, a study by StreetEasy found.

Pressure from community groups forced Valley National Bancorp to strengthen its commitment to lend in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in order to win approval for a Florida acquisition. Other banks, too, are now placing CRA efforts front-and-center as they aim to sell deals to the public and their regulators.

Barclays is ending trading in $700 billion of U.S. mortgage bonds that were issued before the financial crisis.

The legal challenge to the government's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not necessarily a slam-dunk victory, despite an apparent favorable legal ruling in a similar case, analysts at KBW said.

New regulations for credit rating agencies that took effect this week are expected to make mortgage and other asset-backed securities more transparent by requiring broader disclosure of certain due diligence reports.

Almost seven years after the financial crisis, bond investors are rediscovering their appetite for new debt tied to the housing market.

Freddie Mac is planning its fifth risk-sharing transaction of the year.

Private mortgage insurers see deeper coverage of GSE loans as a way to expand business, while lenders hope it could lead to a reduction to guarantee fees.

Alternative data used to score "credit invisibles" may do more harm than good. That's because in areas like employment and insurance, no credit score is often better than a bad one

A bipartisan group of Senate Banking Committee members is urging the Federal Housing Finance Agency to make risk-sharing a higher priority for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Two recent settlements show how far the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is willing to go to pursue lenders it believes skirted the loan officer compensation rules.

The California Reinvestment Coalition has called for a federal investigation into the foreclosure policies of OneWest Bank in minority neighborhoods.