Economy

A number of bankers used quarterly earnings calls to assure investors that they are carefully monitoring their exposure to commercial real estate at a time when regulators are expressed concern about eroding underwriting standards.

Financial companies from Quicken Loans to SoFi will be advertising in Sunday's game — a rare sight in recent years — despite the estimate $5 million price tag.

Buying remained better than renting in certain situations, but members of the millennial generation continued to have reasons to rent instead of buy, according to Zillow.

Arbor Commercial Mortgage has created an online loan-origination service for multifamily lenders.

Mortgage rates for 30-year loans fell to the lowest level since late April, reducing borrowing costs as the housing market enters its key selling season.

The month of November could be foreshadowing of the prediction made by Weiss Analytics that fewer homes would gain in value this year.

More than 1 million homebuyers qualified for a mortgage in the third quarter, the first time since the financial crisis that lenders reached such a threshold, according to research by the Urban Institute.

The House approved a bill 427-0 that would revamp the Federal Housing Administration’s condominium loan program and expedite the approval process for Rural Housing Service guaranteed loans.

Opus Capital Markets Consultants, a unit of Wipro, has created a division for identifying operational and loan-level risks within a residential mortgage servicing operation.

Freddie Mac has taken out another reinsurance policy that transfers risk of default on mortgages it insures.

Mortgage applications declined last week, despite having a favorable comparison to the previous week, which had only four business days, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The delinquency rate on commercial mortgage-backed securities dropped sharply in January, thanks to the resolution of New York's Stuyvesant Town loan, according to Trepp.

ZipLogix, a maker of real estate software, has formed a partnership with Roostify.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac unveiled an appeals process Tuesday that will allow an independent arbitrator to resolve disputes between lenders and the government-sponsored enterprises over loan repurchase demands.

Home prices rose in December in both yearly and monthly comparisons, according to CoreLogic.

Lenders argue that the GSEs would be better off buying more loans that are already insured, rather than transferring credit risk after holding them for a time. But Freddie Mac's Kevin Palmer says certainty of reimbursement is more important than the timing of risk transfers.

The near future may find more banks ceasing to originate residential mortgages in an effort to stop the slide in stock prices.

Loan originations for commercial and multifamily properties climbed in the fourth quarter compared to last year, the Mortgage Bankers Association said.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's Duty-to-Serve rule must include a substantive commitment from the government-sponsored enterprises to purchase chattel loans.

The national median-priced home requires 21% of median incomes for purchase, Black Knight Financial Services said.