News

The commenting period for the proposed amendments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)'s TILA/RESPA rules is open until March 16, according to the Federal Register website.

The nation's first mortgage default index stayed flat in January while the national composite credit default index rose slightly for the sixth straight month, according to the S&P Dow Jones Indices and S&P/Experian Consumer Credit Default Indices for January 2015 released Tuesday. According to the data, the first mortgage default index remained at 1.02 percent from December to January after experiencing its largest increase in 15 months (five basis points) from November to December. January's first mortgage default level is still 14 basis points above its lowest level of 0.88 percent, which was reached in July 2014.

Attorney General Eric Holder has given U.S. attorneys across the country 90 days to judge whether or not they want to bring cases against specific individuals for their alleged roles in 2008's mortgage crisis, according to reports.

RedVision, an independent provider of real property title data, search examination, and curative-ready solutions to customers nationwide, announced Tuesday that it has expanded its in-house abstracting coverage by 154 percent since 2013—and it's only expected to keep growing. As of ...

Three financial institutions – Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs, and UBS Securities – have agreed to a settlement for $235 million with a pension fund that bought Residential Capital to resolve allegations of fraud on the part of the underwriters involving mortgage-backed securities, according to media reports.

As the size of Bank of America's delinquent loans portfolio is shrinking, so is the megabank's workforce – late last week, the bank announced that it was laying off 250 employees from its delinquent mortgage loan division in its headquarters city of Charlotte, North Carolina.

With a little help from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), American consumers can overcome the single biggest obstacle to homeownership – saving for a down payment – and increase their savings to a level that will allow them to finally own a home.

With the nation's homeownership rates similar to those of 50 years ago, the foreclosure rate is significantly higher compared to the early 1960s. The main reason for the increase in foreclosure risk while the homeownership rate remains little changed is leverage, according to CoreLogic chief economist Sam Khater. The economist noted that leverage remains unaddressed by those responsible for initiating housing policy, and he recommended in his study that they may want to consider the ability to manage leverage in order to obtain financial stability in the residential housing market.

While the Obama Administration is touting monthly job gains consistently averaging more than 200,000 and a labor market that they say is at its healthiest level since the turn of the century, at least one analyst says that the recently reported national unemployment rate of 5.6 percent may not be telling the complete story.

Speaking at Thursday's House Judiciary Committee hearing entitled "Oversight of the Justice Department’s Mortgage Lending Settlements," some lawmakers criticized the federal government for using little or none of the $36 billion in recent mortgage backed-securities settlements with big banks to help foreclosure victims.