Risk management

Bank repossessions increased in January across South Florida, a welcome sign that more distressed properties are clearing a crowded court system, a new report shows.

About 1,000 servicemembers are eligible to receive more than $123 million from five mortgage service companies as compensation for unlawful home foreclosures, the Justice Department announced.

Buying a home in California became slightly more within reach in the last quarter of 2014 compared with the quarter prior, but affordability fell overall year-to-year.

Amid a growing investor appetite for risk, efforts to standardize private-label securities are key to helping ensure the market's healthy return.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau took action Thursday against three mortgage companies that, authorities say, falsely implied affiliation with the U.S. government.

Mayor Mike Duggan said that he is working with major investors to create a home-lending program to make it easier for Detroit homeowners to get mortgage-type loans to buy houses.

One of the most widely discussed ideas at ABS Vegas for boosting issuance of private-label residential mortgage securitization involves hiring a third party to monitor the quality of the collateral.

NewDay Financial has agreed to a $2 million fine after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau alleged that the mortgage lender engaged in an improper kickback scheme and used deceptive marketing tactics targeted at veterans.

The Arizona Department of Real Estate has disciplined a number of Tucson real estate agents for trust account irregularities and audit violations, and others for unlicensed real estate activity.

Former Congressman Barney Frank, co-author of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, is not opposed to changes in the eponymous legislation, but in some cases he thinks the rules should be tightened, rather than loosened.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is raising concerns about the transparency and clarity of reverse mortgages based on more than a thousand complaints it received about the product.

When charging fees to borrowers with weaker credit histories, lenders should take great care to describe everything correctly and ensure such fees are not excessive.

It's a mortgage on top of a mortgage, and at least one lender is making these loans again through brokers.

Protests by community groups and now a public hearing threaten to delay the completion of CIT's acquisition of OneWest Bank. The deal will probably get approved, and it might not get delayed too long, but all those "probablys" and "mights" are what make the proponents of more big M&A queasy.

Two Justice Department lawyers leading an effort to hold financial firms accountable for the mortgage-fed debacle that fueled the Great Recession stopped in to talk strategy in mid-2009 with Jerry Brown, then California's attorney general.

Standard & Poor's has agreed to pay Pennsylvania $21.5 million to settle a federal lawsuit that claimed the company defrauded investors by abandoning its role as an independent loan evaluator in the lead-up to the Great Recession.

The Fair Housing Justice Center has filed a federal lawsuit accusing M&T Bank of discrimination in mortgage lending practices on the basis of race and national origin.

You can get a jump on taking preventive and proactive measures against defaults in order to mitigate risk and retain portfolio assets. Here's how.

Dan Sparks helped Goldman Sachs Group Inc. profit from its bets against subprime mortgages. Now he's expanding credit to Americans hurt when those types of loans soured and the housing market collapsed.

Standard & Poor's tab is $1.4 billion — including $52.5 million for Illinois — to resolve long-standing allegations by federal and state authorities that the firm misled investors in the run-up to 2008's financial collapse.