Brokers and small lenders are being crushed under the weight of heavy regulation, leaving loan officers little choice but to shoulder the burden themselves — or move to an organization that can handle the regulatory requirements.

Goldman Sachs said it agreed to settle a U.S. probe into its handling of mortgage-backed securities for about $5.1 billion, cutting its fourth-quarter profit by about $1.5 billion.

Home Equity Conversion Mortgage servicers have received an additional three months to explore loss mitigation options when borrowers or their spouses have difficulty paying their property taxes and insurance.

The reverse mortgage industry is optimistic after recent reforms to the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage by the FHA and newfound respect from financial planners.

For luxury-home developers and brokers in Miami and Manhattan who are already contending with slumping prices and slowing demand, the U.S. government's decision to start scrutinizing all-cash buyers was more bad news.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has rejected a nonprofit housing group's allegations of racial discrimination against U.S. Bank. HUD found that the bank properly maintain foreclosed homes in predominantly black and Hispanic neighborhoods and in some cases spent more rehabilitating the homes than in white areas.

U.S. lawmakers called for federal investigations into Clayton Homes, the mobile-home business at Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway, after the Seattle Times and BuzzFeed News wrote that the company targeted minority borrowers and charged them higher interest rates on average than whites.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has filed charges against three California-based home loan modification companies and nine of their employees for allegedly violating the Fair Housing Act.

Independent mortgage lenders are expecting a wave of consolidation prompted by excessive compliance costs, a tepid housing recovery and the need for more capital to grow their businesses. Roughly 20% to 25% of independent companies could be eliminated or change hands in less than two years.

President Obama's administration, citing concern about the origin of funds used for all-cash purchases of luxury real estate, said it is stepping up scrutiny of transactions in New York and Miami.

Community bankers and credit unions scored a significant victory while others in the mortgage industry lost out in the Federal Housing Finance Agency's final rule establishing membership standards for the Home Loan banks.

Private-label investors in residential mortgage-backed securities should be at only modest risk for noncompliance with TILA-RESPA integrated disclosure requirements, according to Fitch Ratings.

The agency scrapped a part of its 2014 proposal that would have required Home Loan Bank members to maintain a certain percentage of residential mortgage assets in order to keep their membership. But the agency held fast on a provision that would disqualify captive insurance firms from membership.

Recent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcement actions against lead generation companies emphasize the breadth of lenders' responsibility for the third parties they expose borrower clients to.

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro will get a boost in public visibility with a scheduled appearance on the Jan. 11 episode of "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert."

But the strong demand for tax credits from those projects is also whittling down the investment returns as their riskiness declines, according to a new report by the New York-based accounting firm CohnReznick.

A recent tax change will provide more stability to banks and developers that use the low-income housing tax credit program, and the supply of below-market-rate apartments should increase as a result. But it's not enough to create the economic incentives needed to meet skyrocketing demand for affordable housing in the U.S.

Some lenders have asked whether the bureau would adjust its so-called resubmission guidelines — which determine whether lenders have to refile data based on errors found in samples — and it has responded with a request for further industry input.

Clayton Holdings in Shelton, Conn., has opened a consulting office in Silicon Valley to work with financial technology companies.

The more aggressive nonbank lenders are attracting top producers by essentially allowing loan officers to set their own rate of pay. While so-called "pick-a-pay" compensation plans are not illegal, critics say they can encourage loan officers to steer consumers into more expensive loans in order to increase their own pay.