Risk

Mortgage application defects reached a record low in November, according to First American Financial Corp.

Mid America Mortgage Inc. has created a scratch-and-dent purchase program to buy loans with TILA-RESPA integrated disclosure rule defects.

Fannie Mae's final risk-sharing transaction of the year was with reinsurers.

There could be more willingness among lenders to roll back self-imposed requirements for agency loans in 2016, but secondary-market conditions will be mixed for mortgage sellers while rates and costs are poised to rise.

Affordable apartments have not been this hard to find in decades, and a new Mortgage Bankers Association study suggests there are ways existing public-private partnerships could do more to address the concern.

In their search for ways to shift the credit risk of mortgages from taxpayers to capital markets, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac may be overlooking important players: the lenders that make these loans in the first place.

Most investors in a JPMorgan survey said they want to ditch the pricing benchmark now used for a variety of asset-backed bonds — the swaps curve — and go back to Treasuries. But it's not so easy.

Ally Financial Inc. is re-entering the mortgage business just two years after it stopped making new home loans.

CarVal Investors, which made its debut in the securitization market just last month, is back with a second helping of bonds backed by reperforming mortgages

The Morgan Stanley settlement follows a similar agreement with Barclays Capital in October that resulted in a recovery of $325 million.

Indications of fraud ebbed when refinancing was more prevalent, but now that home purchases are picking up, misrepresentations could increase, too.

A former Jefferies & Co. managing director accused of lying to customers about bond prices had his fraud conviction overturned in the latest blow to the government’s effort to hold individuals accountable for alleged wrongdoing on Wall Street.

Seven years after the housing bubble collapsed, Wall Street's appetite for riskier mortgages is returning.

Fannie Mae just took out a potential chunk of private label CMBS supply. The government-sponsored enterprise said it's helping fund Blackstone's purchase of Stuyvesant Town.

Poppi Metaxas, the former chief executive of Gateway Bank in Oakland, Calif., was sentenced to 18 months in prison for perpetrating a scheme involving mortgages.

Sage Bank in Lowell, Mass., has agreed to pay about $1.2 million to settle Justice Department allegations of discrimination against minorities in mortgage lending.

A plan by the government-sponsored enterprises to begin collecting the new Closing Disclosure data is designed to promote Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac's loan quality goals. But the initiative may also prompt broader use of e-signatures and paperless processing.

The percentage of mortgage applications with defects declined in October, according to First American Financial Corp.

Freddie Mac is prepping its next risk-sharing deal, according to presales from Fitch Ratings and Kroll Bond Ratings.

Commercial mortgage underwriting standards have already loosened dramatically this year, but it seems that some borrowers are still trying to get away with a little more.