Consumer lending

New York Community Bancorp has agreed to buy Astoria Financial for about $2 billion in cash and stock, combining two of the largest New York-area banks to create an institution with about $64 billion in total assets.

Nobody thought it would be pretty, but last quarter's results were even worse than expected, and low fee revenue is largely to blame. Trading and mortgage banking were particularly bad, and few of the big banks managed to offset the declines.

Flagstar Bancorp reported a third-quarter profit, as it originated more residential mortgages and recorded higher fee income.

Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson's term as chairman of the MBA underscores how the consumer-direct mortgage channel has grown from a quirky novelty to the force leading a technology revolution.

Astoria Financial, a New York City-area thrift under pressure from activist investor Basswood Capital Management to boost the share price, is exploring a sale, according to people familiar with the matter. The stock climbed as much as 6.2%.

Should credit unions step into a giant breach gradually being vacated by the big banks, or is the bank pull-out a sign that CUs should do the same?

Average fixed mortgage rates perked up the week ending Oct. 15, but remained under the 4% level for the 12th consecutive week.

PNC Mortgage's chief executive and president Joseph C. Guyaux will retire in the spring of 2016, the Pittsburgh-based company announced Thursday. He will be replaced by treasurer and chief investment officer E. William Parsley III.

SunTrust Banks in Atlanta has promoted an executive to oversee its consumer banking and wealth management operations

Mortgage banking represented one weak spot in Wells Fargo's third-quarter results and company officials said that would likely be the case in the fourth quarter.

Bank of America originated $13.7 billion of first-mortgage loans and $3.1 billion of home equity loans during the third quarter, the company said in its quarterly earnings release.

LendingTree already offers a Yelp-like community where consumers can rate loan officers. Now it has created a question-and-answer forum within its loan officer directory platform.

Profit margins in JPMorgan Chase's mortgage banking unit were down in the third quarter, primarily due to the shift in the mix from refinance activity to home purchases, and from retail loan originations to correspondent lending.

LoanDepot in Irvine, Calif., seeks to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering.

NewCastle Home Loans Owner Ryan Kelley has branded himself as "The Home Loan Expert" and is willing to sit in a bathtub full of credit cards to prove it.

It's hard to decide which is more surprising: that the largest U.S. bank has almost abandoned the business of making home loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, that lots of big banks could be right behind it, or that the FHA might not even need to care.

Officials signaled that Hudson City Savings Bank's nearly $33 million settlement over redlining charges is only the first in what is likely to be a string of other cases.

Federal officials on Thursday ordered Hudson City Savings Bank to pay more than $27 million to resolve redlining allegations, the largest order of its kind and one that is likely to put larger banks on notice that redlining cases will be aggressively pursued.

When he's not co-hosting his talk radio show or helping clients, Residential Home Funding's Marc Demetriou is studying loan program guidelines, a task he credits for helping him become one of the industry's top producing loan officers.

Guaranteed Rate has added 75 former Discover Home Loans employees as well as the Irvine, Calif., call center facility that they worked at.