Underwriting

Home equity lenders are putting more loans on the books, thanks to increasing property values. But utilization rates are falling, not increasing, and older loans are paying off at a faster clip than lenders can replace them.

QRM clarified the rules of the road for securitizations. Now, participants in the MBS world seeking better margins are looking beyond the safe harbor — to the subprime space.

Changes to mortgage disclosure rules implemented in October continue to frustrate community bankers and is just another example of the struggle to stay independent.

The number of homeowners who would benefit from refinancing their mortgage has swelled since the beginning of the year, according to Black Knight Financial Services.

A federal judge has allowed to proceed a lawsuit in which a Belgian investor blames Bank of New York Mellon for about $1.1 billion of losses related to its role as trustee for residential mortgage securities.

Lenders are becoming more reluctant to share closing documents with real estate agents now that they have more responsibility for them, the National Association of Realtors claimed Thursday.

New services seek to replace lender processes that often involve manually updated spreadsheets and other efforts pieced together to meet steepening regulatory requirements for vendor management.

Radian Guaranty is filing a new rate structure, lowering its premiums for higher-quality borrowers and raising them for those with lower credit scores.

Understanding how consumers pay their debts over time is expected to widen access to credit for consumers recovering from financial problems or who were hard to score before. Just how many it will benefit is an open debate.

An increased level of home-purchase mortgage applications led to continued improvement in the U.S. housing market in December, according to Freddie Mac.

The inventory of homes for sale in the U.S. declined in January, while home prices continue to rise, according to Zillow.

Meaningful rules encouraging Fannie and Freddie to do more with manufactured housing would allow more lenders into the market and make pricing more competitive.

Law enforcement authorities raided the headquarters of United Mortgage Trust in Grapevine, Texas, on Feb. 18, seeking documents related to the company's management.

Bank of America on Monday will launch a 3% down payment home loan in partnership with Freddie Mac, but the bank will not retain any risk if the loans default. That’s because it will immediately will sell the loans and servicing rights to Self-Help Federal Credit Union, a Durham, N.C., community development lender that's on a mission to put more low- and moderate-income families into homes of their own.

The government-sponsored enterprise was enthusiastic about launching the 97% loan-to-value product when it announced it in December 2014. But it has yet to become a sizable part of Fannie's business.

Financial gyrations have kept long-term interest rates lower than expected and that could be good for the housing market.

The mismatch between demand for new homes and the supply threatens to drive up prices and dampen lending.

Home equity portfolios have shrunk at banks, but credit unions and nonbank lenders like loanDepot helped fuel the surge in home equity lines last year.

United Guaranty reported pretax operating income of $644 million for 2015 while its new insurance written increased by 21%.

Mortgage applications for new home purchases increased 14% on an unadjusted basis from the month before, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association's Builder Application Survey.