Economy

Frank Pallotta sold Wall Street services to lenders and later helped create programs to help underwater borrowers. Now he's running to represent a district both parties fight hard over.

Sales of U.K. homes costing over 1 million pounds ($1.3 million) doubled last month, outperforming the rest of the market as wealthier buyers sought more space following the COVID-19 lockdown.

Wall Street won big buying up homes during the foreclosure crisis and renting them out. Now, it's headed back to the suburbs in hopes of scoring again.

The Financial Stability Oversight Council said the mortgage giants may need a bigger capital cushion than their regulator has proposed, but stopped short of designating them as “systemically important financial institutions.”

After an annual gain in July, newly constructed home listings tumbled in August as coronavirus complications caused the largest inventory drops on record, according to Redfin.

Twelve people were charged in a scheme regarding the creation of 100 fraudulent mortgages in Georgia, according to the HUD inspector general.

Home sales in Greater Hartford continued to surge in August with houses selling faster and at higher prices than the same month a year ago.

The Charlotte, N.C., company recently closed on a sale of its Cohen Financial platform to SitusAMC.

But the group is more conservative than Fannie Mae when it comes to interest rate movements over the next six quarters.

The number of pending sales in Sonoma County, Calif., was up 27% from June through August 2020 versus the same period in 2019 and the percentage of properties that went off the market within two weeks was up 8% in the same period in 2020 versus 2019.

The percentage of borrowers who have asked to temporarily suspend payments due to coronavirus-related hardships is down overall, but in the Ginnie Mae market, they're still inching up.

The future of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the Fed’s supervisory regime for the biggest financial institutions, reform of the Community Reinvestment Act and a host of other industry-related issues are on the ballot this November.

Mortgage lender loanDepot is taking steps toward rebooting plans for an initial public offering, about five years after scrapping one at the last minute, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been slammed for planning an additional refinancing charge to cover COVID-related losses, but the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency defended the policy in House testimony.

Low rates, along with increased new and existing home sales activity drives the latest forecast.

The only rational strategy for holding MSRs is to be very aggressive on protecting the servicing assets via loan recapture. This is one of the chief reasons that banks have been willing to give up their share in lending and servicing as they collapse back to retail-only lending strategies.

A new report on bank-held commercial real estate and C&I loans indicates troubled borrowers may be skipping payments on loans they won't be able to refinance or extend over the next year, leading to a potential wave of defaults over the next four to six quarters.

Electronic notes did come in handy this year given the mortgage industry's need to operate remotely, but they also increase the government-sponsored enterprises' responsibility for monitoring the risk of multiple counterparties.