Secondary markets

Freddie Mac will soon add another automated review on the appraisal reports it receives through the Uniform Collateral Data Portal.

Bank of America Corp.'s Countrywide unit and insurer Allstate Corp. settled a 2010 lawsuit over $700 million in devalued mortgage-backed securities.

Disclosing loan-level data is crucial to rebuilding investor confidence in mortgage-backed securities. It also introduces the risk of compromising borrowers' personal information.

Genworth Financial projected net profit will climb 29% this year at the Australian mortgage insurer that’s slated for an initial public offering.

Radian Group said Chief Executive Officer S.A. Ibrahim’s incentive compensation more than doubled last year as the mortgage insurer’s stock surged.

Efforts to overhaul the housing-finance system could hinge on how far Congress is willing to go to ensure that young, low-income and minority homebuyers can get mortgages.

Citigroup Inc. agreed to pay $1.13 billion to settle claims from mortgage-bond investors as it seeks to curb liabilities tied to the financial crisis.

A big investor in SWS Group has objected to the Dallas company's planned sale to Hilltop Holdings.

After a year in which bankers have voiced steady opposition to the qualified mortgage rule, more than a third now say they will make non-QM loans in targeted markets, a major reversal from the industry's past stance.

After slogging through several quarters of high expenses and shrinking profits, some lenders are now selling mortgage servicing rights to raise cash to cover payroll and expenses, industry sources say.

The apartment-lending units of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were among their few money makers after the U.S. housing collapse. Now they should help transform the U.S. mortgage industry.

Efforts to help underwater borrowers with second liens have had little success, and the Treasury's authority to create new homeowner aid programs under the Troubled Asset Relief Program has expired.

New rules should protect the FHA from losses on reverse mortgages and make prepayments more predictable for bond investors, but they also slow the production of loans available for securitization.

Secondary market agency won't securitize fixed-rate Home Equity Conversion Mortgages that feature a line of credit.

Barriers exist to full-blown recovery in the housing market. Structural barriers. Economic barriers. Regulatory barriers. The list is endless.

Hilltop Holdings in Dallas has finally reached an agreement to buy the remaining shares in SWS Group that it does not already own.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta has appointed Bank of Georgetown Chairman Michael Fitzgerald to its board of directors.

Bank of America Corp. should face Securities and Exchange Commission claims over $855 million in mortgage-backed securities, said a judge who last week advised that a Justice Department complaint over the same securities should be thrown out.

Regulators are going against Congressional intent in their latest "qualified residential mortgage" proposal, former Rep. Barney Frank said.

The Federal Home Loan Banks' Office of Finance said members are borrowing more, yet net income for the system fell from the previous year.