Risk management

The new supplemental performance metric should encourage lenders to serve lower credit score borrowers.

The Federal Housing Administration's Neighborhood Watch website is back online after crashing about three weeks ago.

The Houston housing market still runs the risk of a pullback, based on a range of economic conditions affecting the city, according to Fitch Ratings.

By effectively using technology to gather and verify big data, lenders can underwrite with greater precision, improve loan-level decision making and maximize the integrity of their mortgage portfolios.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have a regulatory mandate to shrink. But that's easier said than done, given the GSEs' outsized presence in the mortgage industry, as their latest quarterly results show.

It was a small deal — about 220 U.S. home loans packaged into a $72 million bond offering — but it's looking like a post-crisis milestone.

Neighborhood Watch, the Federal Housing Administration's "early warning system" for monitoring mortgage defaults and lender performance, crashed more than two weeks ago and it's unclear when the service will be restored.

Just 8% of U.S. mortgage origination volume in the second quarter went to borrowers with subprime credit scores, according to new research by the New York Fed. The findings suggest that mortgage standards have loosened only slightly, if at all.

Shellpoint Partners is preparing to issue its first private-label residential mortgage-backed security since walking away from its last deal in 2013.

M&T Bank's disclosure that it is in settlement talks with the Justice Department for not complying with underwriting guidelines on FHA loans has renewed fears that more lenders will be targeted.

Despite being introduced to the market with great fanfare, Fannie Mae's 3% down payment mortgage offering has yet to gain much traction with lenders and consumers.

Freddie Mac's second-quarter single-family funding was the strongest it's been in a year, positioning the company to supplant the coming drop in refinancing with purchase mortgages.

Regardless of recent activity, marketing services agreements can be legal if lenders find the proper formula to follow.

Home Affordable Modification Program denial rates are still high, but the Treasury Department and top mortgage servicers contend that the numbers have improved.

The Federal Housing Administration is expected to rebuff a government watchdog report that blasted down payment assistance programs. The report has raised concerns that mortgage lenders would have to indemnify FHA for past loans, and that housing finance agencies would have the programs restructured.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is still not producing enough adequately-trained examiners necessary to monitor Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to an inspector general report.

The Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program is renewing calls for further investigation of servicers it claims may be denying too many Home Affordable Modification Program applications.

The Conference of State Bank Supervisors recently challenged college students to examine how community banks survived the financial crisis, and the contest highlighted innovative strategies used by Main Street banks such as Bank of American Fork in Utah.

The government-sponsored enterprises are buying conforming mortgages with as little as 3% down, but the new policy can't improve the housing market by itself.

Signs of optimism are growing for acquisition, development and construction loans as banks hone strategies in a market transformed by the crisis.