Economy

PulteGroup's founder and largest stockholder hired lawyers from a shareholder-activism practice, a sign that he'll increase pressure to get Richard Dugas to step down immediately as the homebuilder's chief executive officer.

Quicken Loans plans to appeal a recent federal labor ruling that the Detroit lender and other companies owned by Dan Gilbert violated employees' rights.

Radian Guaranty's new reinsurance agreement will only cover single-premium mortgage insurance policies, a first for the company. These policies have higher capital requirements under the new secondary market standards.

The number of seriously delinquent mortgages reached its lowest level in over eight years, helped by new job creation and higher wages, CoreLogic reported.

Hint: businesses should be focused on data strategy and security, from the individual up to the enterprise level.

An Altisource Residential Corp. affiliate is taking management's side in the real estate investment trust’s fight with activist investors.

Congress should consider giving direct authority over nonbank mortgage servicers to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to a report released Monday by the Government Accountability Office. The report said there should be "parity" among financial regulators in the oversight of regulated entities and third parties they do business with.

New lender disclosure requirements aren't just disrupting the market for private-label mortgage bonds; they could also impact the market for bonds that transfer credit risk of mortgages insured by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the private sector.

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.

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.

Mortgage rates fell to their lowest level in more than a year, reducing borrowing costs during the peak season for home buying.

According to the American Bankers Association's quarterly report on consumer delinquency trends, late payments on home equity loans and home equity lines of credit have dipped below 15-year averages for the first time since the Great Recession.

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.

The majority of first-time homebuyers plan to skip the starter-home step and move straight into the home that would meet their long-term needs, according to the Homebuyer Insights Report from Bank of America.

As the pressure builds for mortgage lenders to offer digital — specifically mobile — tools, innovators in the space are encouraging the industry to keep the customer as the focus in designing new offerings.

First-lien mortgage originations totaled $1.82 trillion in 2015, a 43% increase from the previous year, according to Equifax.

Homebuyers in hot housing markets from San Francisco to Brooklyn have grown accustomed to bidding wars, waived home inspections and rapid-fire offers.