Mortgages

Community Trust Bank, Dallas, ended September with $288 million of warehouse commitments on its books, a three-fold increase from a year ago.

Pentagon Federal Credit Union, Alexandria, Va., said its PenFed Realty unit has acquired Prudential Carruthers Realtors, a leading real estate broker in the Washington metro area with more than 800 brokers.

Carol Galante came to Washington in early 2009 to run the Federal Housing Administration's multifamily program, but two short years later she's in charge of the entire agency, managing everything from single-unit insurance to reverse lending.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. officials are concerned that banks will continue to suffer in a slow growth economy, but have an even greater fear: that a recession could spur more bank failures.

Mortgage bankers will fund just $900 billion in new loans next year, the industry’s lowest volume since 1997, according to a new forecast from the Mortgage Bankers Association.

The amount of home equity owned by American seniors fell by $63 billion between the first and second quarters, the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association/RiskSpan Reverse Mortgage Market Index found.

MURRIETA, CALIF. — When Lesliane Bouchard took out a mortgage in 2008 to buy a home in Riverside County, she specifically requested a Federal Housing Administration loan. The 8th-grade English teacher and former foster parent thought a government-insured loan would offer the most protection in a falling housing market.

Mortgage applications increased by just over 1% for the week ending October 7, with refinancings remaining steady at about 79% of all new business.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed to clarify the scope of a federal law aimed at protecting mortgage customers from being overcharged by companies that provide real estate settlement services.

The Government National Mortgage Association is making it easier for MBS issuers to pledge their servicing rights to obtain financing from warehouse lenders.

The Obama Administration expects to roll out a plan to lower barriers to refinancing in "the next couple of weeks," HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan told mortgage bankers at their annual convention in Chicago.

AppraiserLoft, the troubled AMC, has suspended all new business, and is preparing to shut down.

A seemingly optimistic survey showing 68% of all respondents, or seven out of 10 homeowners and six out of 10 renters, agree it is a good or very good time to buy a house does not mean much for the housing market recovery—at least for the present.

State regulators have issued guidelines to mortgage examiners on how to test state-licensed nonbanks for steering and other violations of the Federal Reserve's loan origination compensation rule.

Reverse Mortgage Solutions believes mortgage brokers may be the big winners from Bank of America and Wells Fargo exiting the reverse mortgage lending arena.

Housing is "extremely important to the President," a key White House advisor told the Mortgage Bankers Annual convention in Chicago.

While communication between loan buyers and sellers arguably has gotten better since the downturn, Titan Lenders Corp. executive vice president Ruth Lee Lee believes it still needs to improve.

Equifax is teaming up with Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. to offer insurance coverage for lenders that have been stung by loan repurchase requests where hidden debts were involved.

Since being seized by the government during the financial crisis, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac haven't been businesses so much as government-owned mortgage utilities. That status was supposed to be temporary, but three years later, lawmakers have shown little appetite for changing it.

Royal Credit Union, Eau Claire, Wisc., has agreed to acquire 4,200 mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of $600 million from a failed Minnesota bank called The RiverBank. No purchase price was disclosed.