Risk management

The rate of delinquencies of 90 days or more has trended downward since 2009, but servicing costs have generally been rising, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That is not the way it used to work.

The Federal Housing Administration's recent premium reduction is undercutting the private sector and expanding the government's role in the housing market, housing finance industry representatives told a House subcommittee on Thursday.

It can be difficult to have enough staff to handle an exchange of mortgage servicing rights, though companies are exploring different solutions

Some nonbanks feel capital requirements discourage diversification among market participants and their participation in the market because they put more constraints on their financial options and bar smaller players.

Panelists at the MBA's mortgage servicing conference said that the best way for servicers to keep federal regulators off their backs is to be responsive consumer complaints. And if a state attorney general or regulator come knocking, it’s best to be responsive and cooperative.

It's not quite too big to fail, but Ocwen is the country's largest servicer of subprime mortgages. So if it were forced to sell itself, or even failed, the transfer of some $410 billion in servicing rights could create havoc in the mortgage market, industry experts said.

Recent court decisions against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders have put to rest the notion that the two mortgage giants exist as anything but instrumentalities of the U.S. government, according to a report by Kroll Bond Rating Agency.

If you want to know what a Greek exit from the euro would do to the €16.7 billion ($19 billion) of bonds out there backed by Greek assets, a good place to start is Argentina.

San Francisco's much-maligned Housing Authority is getting out of the management business.

While many servicers are under pressure to sell of mortgage servicing rights, there's still a fair amount of interest in buying MSRs from other quarters of the market.

CFPB officials are keeping a close watch on the Qualified Mortgage and ability-to-repay rules to gauge whether further changes should be made. But mortgage numbers don't give a clear picture on what kind of impact they've had.

The independent monitor overseeing Bank of America's compliance with requirements of its landmark mortgage settlement agreement has released his first report on the bank's consumer relief activities.

Foreclosures and delinquencies may seem like problems from the past, but servicers are still struggling with a massive backlog of distressed loans and a return to normalcy is at least two years away, if not longer.

The Department of Veterans Affairs released a plan to use a 387-acre tract of land in west Los Angeles to help end veteran homelessness in the city.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, who forced Wall Street's biggest banks to pay billions in fines for their roles in the subprime mortgage crisis, is pressing for action against executives at those firms, even as he prepares to leave his post.

The North Texas region has been a hub for mortgage servicing for decades, dating back to the oil bust and savings and loan crisis of the 1980s. Today, some key players and many smaller ones remain firmly entrenched in the area.

Nationally, the overall denial rate on a conventional loan was 12.4%, Zillow found after studying 2013 data lenders reported under the U.S. Housing Mortgage Disclosure Act.

One of the culprits in the building and bursting of the nation's housing bubble, the low-down-payment mortgage, is back in favor and readily available at a lender near you.

Just three years ago, CEO David Nelms heralded the purchase of LendingTree Loans as a milestone in Discover's evolution from a strict credit-card company to a broad-based consumer lender. Now he is hinting that it might exit the mortgage business.

For over a third of millennials, first comes home then comes marriage, according to a recent study.