Mortgages

Seven affordable housing groups are urging the Department of Justice, HUD and federal regulators to investigate whether the prevalence FHA and VA lending in minority neighborhoods—and the low percentage of conventional lending—is a result of racial steering.

In a joint letter, four trade associations note that paying commissions based solely on loan volume does not run afoul of the Dodd-Frank Act.

Why do we stop doing things we know we should be doing?

Forget refinancing. A new hypothesis suggests targeted modifications would be much more effective in easing the negative equity crisis.

Bank of America is offering $22 million in grants to nonprofit agencies across the country that offer foreclosure prevention services and build and repair affordable housing.

Alan Potts, until recently a senior vice president in charge of wholesale lending at Carrington Mortgage Services, has left the company.

Mortgage vendor Nationwide Title Clearing is continuing to hire new employees, adding 66 full-timers in the second quarter.

By now you’ve read the stories on the National Mortgage News website about private equity sniffing around the mortgage industry the past two years – and the chatter about some firm with $1 billion to spend. We don’t yet know the name of that fund but it’s interesting gossip nonetheless.

Fidelity National Financial saw a 30% increase in business as new residential title orders in the second quarter totaled 667,500 versus 514,000 in 2Q11.

CoreLogic earned $41 million off revenue of $389 million during the second quarter of 2012—new records for the company which was spun off from the First American Corp. in June 2010.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is working on a qualified mortgage rule that will allow the mortgage market to meet the needs of borrowers “throughout the credit cycle,” agency chief Richard Cordray said in new testimony Tuesday morning.

Wells Fargo, the country’s largest wholesaler, joins JPMorgan Chase in jettisoning wholesale.

At least two bidders remain for the $30.8 billion of Freddie Mac mortgage servicing rights once owned by the now-defunct Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.

Even Beverly Hills has distressed assets. But commercial real estate advisory firm Lucent Capital has come to the rescue—yet again.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has hired a consulting firm to create contingency plans for taking Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank system into receivership.

Marketing campaign return on investment can be measured by tangibles or intangibles.

Monday marked the implementation deadline for the Uniform Loan Delivery Dataset, the new loan-level mortgage information file format developed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for all loans sold to the government-sponsored enterprises.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau wants to level the playing field so that all mortgage loan officers, whether they work at a bank or a mortgage brokerage, undergo similar training and meet the same standards for character, fitness and financial responsibility.

When it comes to automation technology, servicers are faced with a myriad of choices between traditional, in-house software versus vendor-hosted services, or software-as-a-service delivery options.

Forecasters expect Wednesday’s new-home sales report will show June sales rose by barely 1% after a 7.6% jump in May.