Law and regulation

President Obama's 2016 budget plan tackled a host of big picture items for mortgages, including Dodd-Frank reform, FHA lending and GSE reform.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency will require nonbank mortgage firms to meet minimum liquidity and net worth standards to curb risks to taxpayers from the rapidly expanding industry.

Two Republican legislators have suggested that affordable housing funding should be put on hold until Congress finally decides what to do about Fannie and Freddie. But why give Congress another six years to fiddle around with housing finance while the poor and homeless face a declining level of government housing assistance?

In yet another revision of its mortgage rules, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed making it easier for small and rural lenders to make "qualified mortgages." Industry representatives said the changes are poised to make a big difference.

The Federal Housing Administration will make foreclosure protections available to a larger number of surviving spouses of deceased reverse mortgage borrowers.

The Treasury Department has exceeded its authority by keeping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in conservatorship so long and taking all their profits, two legislative experts said Thursday.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday proposed a series of regulatory relief measures for small institutions, especially those in rural areas, to help them provide credit while they try to follow the agency's tough mortgage rules.

New Jersey’s largest home-grown savings bank continued to shed loans and deposits in the fourth quarter as it continues to wait to be acquired by a commercial bank from upstate New York.

Joining the hunt for higher-yielding niche loans, the asset management unit of NewOak Capital has quietly launched a private fund to acquire nonqualified residential mortgages.

The government has added further protections to reverse mortgage borrowers' spouses who are not named in the loan agreement, but placed conditions under which they are ineligible for older protections.

At a hearing Tuesday, GOP lawmakers hammered FHFA Director Mel Watt for four hours over his recent decisions to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy loans with lower downpayments and provide money to two affordable housing trust funds.

With conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac well into its seventh year, the government has now had control of the housing agencies longer than 47 members of the Senate have been office.

A majority of small bank executives are concerned about the impact of new regulations on their mortgage lending business, according to an industry trade group.

The Supreme Court gave borrowers the path to file a rescission notice without going to court, but experts expect more banks to initiate legal proceedings to stop rescissions they see as frivolous.

California's Department of Business Oversight said Friday that it will drop its effort to suspend Ocwen Loan Servicing's mortgage license in California. The Atlanta servicer had failed for more than a year to provide its California regulator with requested information

The consumer bureau and Maryland's AG allege the loan officers received consumer data and other services in return for business referrals.

When writing your own State of the Union presentation, skip to the part where you lay out the vision for what your company will be in the future.

Hearing arguments in Texas case, Justice Scalia and others were skeptical that the controversial legal theory used in fair housing cases should be invalidated.

Julian Castro, secretary of housing and urban development, said 2015 will be a year of "housing opportunity" as the economy continues its rebound.

Standard & Poor's is close to an agreement to pay $1.4 billion to settle claims by the Justice Department and states attorneys general that it inflated subprime mortgage-bond ratings before the financial crisis, according to two people with knowledge of the talks.