Mortgage defaults

A federal relief effort that set aside nearly $2 billion in housing aid for troubled Californians is being expanded to help older homeowners avert foreclosures on their reverse mortgages.

Silver Bay Realty Trust Corp. agreed to buy about 2,460 single-family rental homes in one of the nascent industry's largest bulk purchases.

Foreclosures and delinquencies may seem like problems from the past, but servicers are still struggling with a massive backlog of distressed loans and a return to normalcy is at least two years away, if not longer.

National credit default rates accelerated in January from recent lows seen last year.

The North Texas region has been a hub for mortgage servicing for decades, dating back to the oil bust and savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Today, some key players and many smaller ones remain firmly entrenched in the area.

They're called "zombie properties" — dilapidated, abandoned and overgrown with weeds because the lending institutions inheriting them through foreclosure fail to maintain them.

Nationally, the overall denial rate on a conventional loan was 12.4%, Zillow found after studying 2013 data lenders reported under the U.S. Housing Mortgage Disclosure Act.

Delinquencies of new commercial mortgage-backed securities finished January at a post-recession low, according to Fitch Ratings.

Essent Group closed out its first full year as a public company in the black, as increased premiums continued to fuel profitability.

Lenders including Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. are accelerating their sales of soured U.S. mortgages as investment firms compete to buy the debt.

Bank repossessions increased in January across South Florida, a welcome sign that more distressed properties are clearing a crowded court system, a new report shows.

Radian Group, of Philadelphia, had an explosively strong fourth quarter in 2014 thanks to a reduction of its risk profile as a result of the pending sale of its financial guaranty unit.

After backing off for a while, banks ramped up the pressure on delinquent Nevada homeowners last month, seizing more homes and starting the foreclosure process on more people, a new report shows.

Bank of America is laying off 250 mortgage and technology workers in Charlotte as the No. 2 U.S. bank continues to reduce its portfolio of bad loans.

Genworth Financial's private mortgage insurance business was a rare bright spot for a company that overall, lost $1.2 billion during the fourth quarter.

Orlando homebuyers, particularly Hispanics, have had a more difficult time getting approved for mortgages than buyers nationally, a new study shows.

Despite San Francisco's low unemployment rate and skyrocketing real estate prices, a new study shows that the economic recovery hasn't touched everyone in the city.

Mortgage insurer MGIC Investment Corp. capped off January with 243 more delinquencies on its books than the month prior, according to figures the company released Monday.

A new $913.5 million CMBS is in the market, according to a presale from DBRS.

A new report from Fitch Ratings found the percentage of loan principal a lender recorded as a loss after foreclosure was similar for agency and nonagency loans.