Underwriting

Mortgage application volume increased 3% from one week earlier as slightly lower interest rates resulted in more refinance activity, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

PHH Corp. will pay the Justice Department $75 million to settle a False Claims Act investigation of its underwriting practices on government-insured mortgages and loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The year opened with hopes that regulatory and enforcement pressures would abate for the mortgage industry. The reality has turned out quite differently.

Mortgage rates were little changed this week after declining the previous two weeks, according to Freddie Mac.

Mortgage application activity decreased 2.8% from one week earlier as interest rates were flat or moved slightly higher, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Old Republic International Corp. is again making noise about bringing its mortgage insurance subsidiary back to active status, while separating it out from the holding company.

CoreLogic will fully integrate its 4506-T income verification product in August with Fannie Mae's Desktop Underwriter platform to provide Day 1 Certainty service.

Loan application defects increased for the seventh consecutive month in June, due to the highly competitive purchase market, according to First American Financial Corp.

Freddie Mac has set a November implementation date for its plan to tighten restrictions on seller-funded down payments.

Ellie Mae had second-quarter net income of $18.8 million, a 77% increase over the $10.6 million in the same period last year largely due to a tax accounting change.

U.K. regulators’ decision to abandon the Libor benchmark by the end of 2021 threatens to sow confusion in the market as the industry races to replace the scandal-plagued rate that underpins more than $350 trillion of financial products.

Mortgage rates dropped for the second consecutive week, although the yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury actually increased during the period, according to Freddie Mac.

Loan application volume increased 0.4% from one week earlier, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association, as rates fell to their lowest level in three weeks.

Fannie Mae is increasing the maximum debt-to-income ratio it will allow on purchased loans to 50% from 45% on single-family loans when it rolls out its latest version of Desktop Underwriter on July 29.

When market prices rise faster than comparable home sales values it is imperative for lenders to ensure property valuations are accurate, support the sales price and completed in a timely fashion to keep deals from falling through. (Part four in a four-part series on the mortgage industry's response to the housing inventory shortage.)

Mortgage rates moved back below 4%, pushed by last week's weak economic data report, according to Freddie Mac.

The share of closed purchase loans remained flat in June, affected by the lack of homes for sale, according to Ellie Mae's Origination Insight report.

Mortgage loan application volume increased 6.3% last week as interest rates remained flat after a sharp gain during the previous 14-day period, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

Canadians may be shouldering near-record household debt but homeowners have been managing it better than those that don't own property.