Economy

A Lone Star Funds affiliate agreed to buy U.S. apartment landlord Home Properties Inc. in a transaction valued at about $7.6 billion, including debt.

Varde Partners has closed a $500 million fund that will invest in real estate securities, the firm announced this week.

U.S. consumers are increasingly using their credit cards rather than tapping home-equity credit lines to pay debts or finance a big purchase, according to Sanford C. Bernstein.

KB Home rose the most in three months after reporting fiscal second-quarter earnings that beat analysts' estimates and a jump in orders for houses.

Black and Hispanic home-loan applicants in New York are more than twice as likely to be denied as white applicants, a study by StreetEasy found.

Pressure from community groups forced Valley National Bancorp to strengthen its commitment to lend in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods in order to win approval for a Florida acquisition. Other banks, too, are now placing CRA efforts front-and-center as they aim to sell deals to the public and their regulators.

Ginnie Mae's issuance of mortgage-backed securities exceeded Fannie Mae's issuance in May for the first time since the late 1980s.

Homebuyers snapped up properties more quickly in May, the brokerage firm Redfin said.

Mortgage rates dropped as Europeans worrying about a Greek default beefed up investments in American mortgage-backed bonds.

Optimism abounds in Fannie Mae's survey of mortgage lenders for the second quarter of 2015.

Residential mortgages for new purchases increased in May, after a steady decline for the previous 12 months, according to Ellie Mae's monthly volume report.

Wells Fargo has hired a new head of commercial real estate lending for its Orange County, Calif., office.

FICO discards incomplete and old credit history information for a good reason. The solution to today's credit-access problems is not to use this unreliable data but to turn to alternative data such as the payment of everyday bills.

Amalgamated Bank in New York has reached an agreement with a real estate firm to provide construction loans for apartment and condo buildings in New York.

Barclays is ending trading in $700 billion of U.S. mortgage bonds that were issued before the financial crisis.

Deutsche Bank priced most tranches issued from its $1 billion commercial mortgage securitization wider than the last conduit issued, according to a regulatory filing.

Discover Financial Services will exit the residential mortgage-origination business that it acquired in 2012.

The legal challenge to the government's bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is not necessarily a slam-dunk victory, despite an apparent favorable legal ruling in a similar case, analysts at KBW said.

Access to credit is too tight. New credit-scoring models could increase the number of eligible borrowers in the U.S. without weakening todays underwriting parameters.

One mortgage executive says there is a continuing need for lenders, real estate agents, consumer groups and government to educate consumers to their options when it comes to financing a home.