REO

distressed loans, foreclosure, Fitch Ratings, Residential Mortgage Market Index

The largest single-family home landlords plan to raise their rents as much as 5.7% this year as they shift focus from buying properties to boosting their bottom lines.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has sold $3.7 billion of soured loans since late 2012 to aid homeowners in communities hurt by foreclosures. So far, the government agency has mostly helped itself.

Only about one in four former homeowners who lost property during the housing crash will soon become buyers again as tight credit keeps many out of the U.S. real estate market, according to a National Association of Realtors study.

NMN's 9th Annual Mortgage Servicing Conference is coming up. Here are some of the can't-miss sessions and speakers on the agenda.

Altisource Portfolio Solutions has raised the curtain on Residential Investor One, a new cooperative aimed at providing savings and services for real estate investors.

FirstKey Lending priced a $241 million securitization of fixed-rate loans it made to landlords for the purchase of single-family homes.

Blackstone Group cemented its position as the world's biggest private-equity investor in real estate with a global buying spree that includes General Electric Co. assets and a California-based shopping-center owner.

B2R Finance, a company controlled by the Blackstone Group that lends to landlords, has priced its first rental securitization.

The Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs awarded contracts to Matt Martin Real Estate Management and Waterman Steele Real Estate Advisors to help the state agency handle its real estate portfolio.

The number of borrowers who could reap the benefits of refinancing has grown to 7.1 million as interest rates have fallen, according to Black Knight Financial Services.

FirstKey Lending is securitizing $241 million of fixed-rate loans it made to landlords for the purchase of buy-to-rent, single-family homes, according to a presale from Kroll Bond Ratings Agency.

Blackstone Group's latest sale of bonds backed by rental homes found robust demand from investors, particularly the riskiest portions of the offering, as the market prepares for a new breed of the securities.

The National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals has issued an industrywide call to improve access to affordable housing.

Large mortgage servicers continued to shed delinquencies as overall loan performance improved in the fourth quarter, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said Friday.

Blackstone Group's rental-home finance company plans to offer bonds backed by properties managed by many landlords, the first sale of the debt from multiple borrowers.

Commercial mortgage-backed securities servicers have held on to real-estate owned properties for longer than usual, which could lead to a reversal in the declines in liquidations seen recently, according to a Fitch Ratings study.

Ocwen Financial Corp. said investors in mortgage-backed securities who criticized its servicing policies are trying to force more foreclosures.

Nationwide foreclosure activity in February approached its lowest point since the financial crisis, mortgage analytics firm Black Knight Financial Services concluded in its monthly "first look" report.

Lennar Corp., the second largest U.S. homebuilder, is raising its bet on rental housing as the pace of sales continues to drag.