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Annaly Capital Management, the largest real estate investment trust that buys mortgage debt, agreed to purchase Hatteras Financial Corp. for $1.5 billion as the company expands its property business.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit will hear oral arguments Tuesday about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's structure, in a case that has national implications. Even though a ruling isn't expected until the end of the year, legal experts say there are four major legal issues involved.

Commercial and multifamily originators closed $504 billion in loans last year, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's experiments with selling credit risk to investors are a critical element of new plan to merge the two entities and move them out of conservatorship, but what form so-called credit risk transfers take could make a big difference.

Eight years after subprime mortgages all but disappeared, U.S. buyers with bad credit can still own homes.

The total number of loan programs being marketed declined in March, as fewer conventional offerings offset a loosening of standards on government products, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The housing market has been improving but mortgage credit remains "stubbornly" tight on loans bought by the government-sponsored enterprises, according to a chief housing adviser at the White House.

Consumers are feeling a growing pessimism about the direction of the economy that appears to be spilling over into the housing market in March, Fannie Mae said.

Nomura Holdings Inc. held a training session after a former Jefferies & Co. managing director was indicted for fraud and encouraged its traders not to lie — but that didn't stop the fibbing to customers about bond prices, according to U.S. prosecutors.

Credit market turmoil continued to take a toll on commercial property prices in February, when Moody's/RCA Commercial Property Price Indices national all-property composite index declined for a second consecutive month.