Mortgage rates for 30-year loans rose to a two-month high, increasing borrowing costs for homebuyers as the market’s recovery showed signs of weakening.

With more reliable loan data, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would have greater confidence that borrowers would not default. In return, lenders would receive a juicy carrot: fewer buyback requests.

There is growing evidence that Washington is making the same mistake with respect to the housing and mortgage markets.

Purchases of new homes fell in February to the lowest level in five months, a sign the industry may take time to pick up after inclement weather damped demand earlier in the year.

On the surface, it seems mortgage firms must explain valuation reports to each new applicant or eliminate the use of lower-cost advanced valuation intelligence. However, there may be another option.

Lenders should avoid repeated mistakes in their process as they could be used as evidence of a fraudulent intention to originate loans without proper safeguards and underwriting processes.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will suspend work on the Uniform Mortgage Servicing Dataset to conduct a fact-finding exercise to identify broader data standardization needs in the servicing industry.

The slowdown in housing since the middle of last year reflects a pickup in borrowing costs, declining affordability, limited job growth and, more recently, bad weather.

There is likely to be a record number of consumers shopping online for their mortgage in 2014.

Home sales in California fell 13.7% in February from a year earlier, the seventh monthly decline in a row, as housing inventory increased, according to the California Association of Realtors.

The best thing to happen to the business over the last three decades was the development of the secondary agencies' automated underwriting engines. The worst? There are several strong contenders….

The vendor thinks it can meet lenders' needs by creating a system which manages the various tasks that must be completed to move a loan through the origination pipeline.

Housing starts were little changed in February after declining less than previously estimated a month earlier, indicating the homebuilding industry is stabilizing after bad winter weather curbed construction.

The number of homeowners who received loan modifications rose to roughly 44,000 in January—up 2% from the previous month.

Mountain America Credit Union closed its first e-signed FHA mortgages, among the very first paperless loans executed under a policy enacted in January.

• Paperless FHA
• Servicing Roundtable
• Lender Outsourcing
• Appraisal Regulations

The Federal Housing Administration is struggling with a high premium structure and competition from VA and GSEs.

Underwriting is back in style and underwriters are in high demand as the requirements of investors and regulatory considerations require more documentation and more scrutiny around whether a borrower can pay back the loan.

A cybersecurity firm claims many large and small mortgage lenders are being careless with customers’ personal and financial data.

Home Affordable Refinance Program loans are receding with overall refinancing, but in January they still looked to be running at about 23% of agency refis. The program ends next year.