Risk management

With the stakes so high for compliance officers, their rights and responsibilities should be clearly defined, including a safe harbor for those who play by the rules.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau acknowledges that gearing up for the Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosures has been tough, and it promises to consider that fact in exams.

Mortgage servicers are actively discussing with regulators how current rules could be streamlined, and future rules could be shaped, to minimize costs and hassles.

The mismatch between demand for new homes and the supply threatens to drive up prices and dampen lending.

There is concern that a decline in condo pricing could create loan problems similar to those that cropped up before the financial crisis. Bankers in the area, however, believe foreign investors would take the biggest hit.

Low borrowing costs and rising home values are just two of several reasons why owning a home is far less burdensome than it was a decade ago.

Investors continue to demand additional yield for exposure to defaults on loans insured by the Fannie Mae.

Redwood Trust said it will stop originating commercial mortgages for securitization and focus solely on investing in bonds backed by commercial mortgages originated by others.

Fitch Ratings is warning about the mezzanine tranches of commercial mortgage securitization by Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch, though it is still rating the notes.

Many institutional investors are refusing to purchase mortgages loans until they get assurance from the CFPB that they won't have to pay for others' mistakes. Their pullback could further the slow the issuance of private-label mortgage bonds this year, a huge concern at a time when the majority of home loans are insured by Fannie, Freddie and the FHA.

Ted Tozer, president of the Government National Mortgage Agency wants more hands to monitor the growing number of nonbank MBS issuers.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's indirect response to Quicken Loans' Super Bowl 50 commercial implicitly warns consumers to be wary of technology, which points to a bigger problem: does the CFPB even know what it wants from the mortgage industry?

PennyMac Mortgage Financial Services reported a rise in income on higher servicing revenue.

Station Place Securitization Trust 2016-1 plans to issue a $225 million mortgage securitization that will be the first backed by a revolving warehouse lending facility since 2009, according to Moody's Investors Service.

A number of bankers used quarterly earnings calls to assure investors that they are carefully monitoring their exposure to commercial real estate at a time when regulators are expressed concern about eroding underwriting standards.

The rate of home price recovery during the seven years that a foreclosure remains on a consumer's credit report is one measure of whether borrowers who strategically defaulted made the right choice by walking away. But the results vary, depending on when, where and in what price tier that borrowers defaulted.

Borrowers who walked away from underwater mortgages are coming back to the market. Some lenders are ready to give them a second chance.

After years of refi-fueled origination volume, lenders have their hopes pegged to a resurgent purchase market in 2016 and beyond. But it raises an important question: will strategic default rear its head again in the next downturn?

More than 1 million homebuyers qualified for a mortgage in the third quarter, the first time since the financial crisis that lenders reached such a threshold, according to research by the Urban Institute.

Opus Capital Markets Consultants, a unit of Wipro, has created a division for identifying operational and loan-level risks within a residential mortgage servicing operation.