Mortgages

A little over three years ago insurance giant MetLife looked like a genius. It stuck its toe in the mortgage banking pond by purchasing the production arm of First Horizon, some of its MSRs, and kept adding to the business.

Senate Republicans plan to block the confirmation of Carol Galante to head the Federal Housing Administration until the Obama administration takes more forceful action to strengthen the government mortgage insurer - and issues a blueprint for dealing with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Umpqua Bank, Roseburg, Ore., is expanding its commercial real estate lending operations by upgrading its structure to be a division of the bank and promoting John Swanson to senior vice president and commercial real estate manager.

DebtX, Boston, has been hired to sell roughly $334 million of troubled acquisition, development and construction loans for a bankrupt real estate fund.

Mortgage document preparation technology vendor DocuTech acquired competing doc prep technology Docs3D in a deal announced Tuesday.

As we wrap up another year, we look for innovative and fun ways to wish our clients, friends, referral partners, others we do business with, others we want to do business with, et al, a happy holiday season.

Prudential Mortgage Capital Co., Newark, N.J., has hired at least two multifamily loan officers for the Boston office it opened in October and plans to expand further throughout the nation, one senior executive of the company told National Mortgage News.

If households are ever to climb out of the financial hole created by the housing bust, stocks are going to have to do better.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is urging a U.S. district court to block the city of Chicago from enforcing an ordinance that could increase the cost of maintaining foreclosed properties controlled by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Many lenders are no longer getting mortgage borrower leads from the Google Comparison Ads platform, as the search engine giant has suspended its rate search and lead generation tool in all but four states and the District of Columbia.

The Inspector General's office of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is taking bids on a contract to evaluate mortgage servicing rights, according to a 'request for proposal' being circulated around the industry.

Earlier this month Freddie Mac released the results of its Primary Mortgage Market Survey revealing that interest rates are still at historic lows.

A hot legal issue known among insiders as the "City of Chicago ordinance" transfers the burden and costs of vacant property ownership from the mortgagee to the lender clashing with some county-level foreclosure process requirements.

Ashford Hospitality Trust Inc., Dallas, has restructured and extended the maturity date on a $203.4 million mortgage loan that was originally due this month. According to the company's third quarter 10-Q filing, the loan is secured by five hotels; the lender was not disclosed.

ViewPoint Financial Group, Plano, Texas, has agreed to purchase Highlands Bancshares, and its subsidiary bank, First National Bank of Jacksboro, in a stock deal valued at $71 million.

House Republican leaders have included a hike in GSE guarantee fees in their bill to extend a payroll tax holiday that is similar to a Senate version, which means seller/servicers could be facing higher g-fees next year.

BNC National Bank's Doug Brendel is shoulder deep in all of the challenges facing mortgage lenders in the new post-crisis market - expansive compliance requirements, new disclosures, compressed loan processing times, a growing mountain of documentation, and the need for staff buy-in to necessary changes in familiar work processes.

Federal regulators took another step last week toward lessening banks' reliance on credit ratings by proposing three methods for assessing risk on firms' trading books.

The drop over 3Q11 of commercial and multifamily loans is a credit positive for CMBS, according to Standard & Poor's in a note released Friday.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had so far limited its complaint process to just credit cards. But CFPB began taking complaints related to home mortgages as of Dec. 1.