Thanks, in part, to HARP loans private mortgage insurers in 2012 posted their best year since the financial market collapse back in 2008, according to new figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance.

Joe Anderson, who worked at Countrywide Financial Corp. for 17 years and then Nationstar, is considered the top candidate to get the CEO job at Vericrest Financial.

Stonegate Mortgage has launched a new jumbo conduit, hiring Eric Schlotz, a 15-year veteran from GMAC-RFC in Minneapolis, to manage the operation.

Three senators are pushing for 3 percent downpayment language on the QRM rule.

A new final rule from the Department of Housing and Urban Development may make it harder for lenders to defend against allegations of racially discriminatory policies and even more difficult to structure an effective compliance program under the Fair Housing Act, according to legal experts. Issued last week, the rule provides that HUD or a private plaintiff can establish a so-called disparate-impact liability under the FHAct, even if there is no intent to discriminate. The agency said the rule establishes no new law – since HUD and appellate courts have upheld the disparate impact theory in fair housing cases for decades – and aims to standardize the minor variations for determining liability under the statute. The rule establishes...

President Obama, during his State of the Union address, urged Congress to get the HARP 3.0 refinancing program off the ground.

Officially, the GSE net-worth minimum is set at $2.5 million, but some in the industry think it will double eventually.

The CFPB said mortgage lenders can ask the agency "important" interpretation questions on the many rules that it finalized this year.

Fortress Investment Group has raised $1.6 billion to buy mortgage assets, including servicing rights.

FHA single-family production rose 22.3 percent in 2012, but another increase in the mortgage insurance premiums will likely accelerate the program’s three-year decline in market share.