Law and regulation

Higher rates, mounting costs and the opportunity to lend to underserved borrowers have pushed some residential lenders to lower their minimum FICO scores, despite broader reluctance to take more risk in a heavily-regulated market.

Housing and lending groups are urging the government sponsored enterprise regulator and conservator to keep the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loan limits where they are for now.

A coalition of advocacy groups announced their opposition Friday to a bill by Senate Banking Committee leaders to overhaul the housing finance system, citing concerns about market access for low-income and minority families.

The former owner of a New York mortgage loan modification business was sentenced Friday to serve nine years in prison for defrauding hundreds of distressed homeowners and their lenders.

Lenders and servicers are worried about the cost of dealing with widows and widowers who didn't sign the mortgages if they can't be foreclosed upon.

When a lawyer wields a regularly updated, 150-page compliance manual as evidence against a mortgage servicer, it's more important than ever to make sure company documents are heavy on details.

The former Wells Fargo Home Mortgage loan officer faces up to 30 years in prison for his role in the conspiracy.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will suspend work on the Uniform Mortgage Servicing Dataset to conduct a fact-finding exercise to identify broader data standardization needs in the servicing industry.

Roughly 167,800 families who face foreclosure will receive housing counseling through the eighth round of funding from the National Foreclosure Mitigation Counseling program.

WASHINGTON -- The Federal Reserve Board on Wednesday took yet another step in unwinding its bond buying program, paring it to $55 billion.

As home equity lines of credit hit the five-year mark and borrowers have to start repaying principal, lenders might have to modify these second liens to avert defaults.

Details in recent legislation unveiled by Sens. Tim Johnson and Mike Crapo are stoking fresh concerns among Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders now embroiled in lawsuits over their share of profits from the mortgage giants.

A court hearing this week could force housing officials to clarify a longstanding gray area in the reverse mortgage business: When the borrower dies, can the lender foreclose on a surviving spouse not named in the loan?

The settlement monitor gave the banks credit for $20 billion in relief – less than half the total provided, since only partial credit was given for breaks other than principal reduction.

The bill released by Sens. Tim Johnson and Mike Crapo would create a reinsurance fund to recoup losses on securities, establish a common securitization platform for the secondary mortgage market and open access to the secondary market for smaller lenders through a cooperative.

Mountain America Credit Union closed its first e-signed FHA mortgages, among the very first paperless loans executed under a policy enacted in January.

Two House Democrats joined Sen. Elizabeth Warren in asking for a meeting with Attorney General Eric Holder about an inspector general's finding that his department's focus on mortgage fraud has not been as strong as advertised.

In the current tough mortgage environment, some lenders are willing to take the risk of lending to foreign nationals. The loans don't conform to regulations that took effect in January and typically are held on banks' balance sheets.

The Senate Banking Committee has forged a strong bipartisan agreement to reform the housing finance market, but how—and whether—that effort gets picked up in 2015 is still very much in question.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency says institutions are taking a "proactive" approach to the dealing with potential payment shock on resetting home equity lines of credit.