Part of the $5.1 billion settlement amount Goldman Sachs agreed to in principle with the federal government last week will be used to provide relief for homeowners who owe more than the current appraised value of their homes. The agreement would resolve an ongoing investigation by the Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities Working Group of the U.S. Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force, which President Obama established in 2009 to pursue those who played a role in causing the financial crisis. The tentative agreement would resolve...

The number of foreclosed properties and length of time it takes to foreclose is trending downward, but average time to foreclose is taking nearly three years or more in some states. RealtyTrac recently released its 2015 foreclosure report and noted that it took more than 1,000 days to foreclose in six states in the fourth quarter, with New Jersey leading the way at 1,180 days. That number is...

MGIC CEO Patrick Sinks noted that the mortgage insurer will be revising its premium rate cards soon. Stay tuned...

For some servicers, including Ocwen Financial, the math of outsourcing is simple: pay back-office workers the equivalent of $2 an hour when their U.S. counterparts can earn at least five times that.

Ocwen, in particular, will need to tell investors exactly how they plan to become a top-10 originator, something that seems like a long shot right now...

The mega banked earned $133 million from home lending and servicing in the fourth quarter, a 35 percent decline from 3Q15.

For investors in mortgage stocks, the question becomes: Well, how much will these beaten-down eight come back?

Should mortgage servicers begin to worry about residential delinquencies in such oil producing states as North Dakota, Oklahoma and Texas?

When’s the last time a regional or megabank bought a nonbank mortgage company? Wells Fargo? JPMorgan? BofA? Citigroup? Nope, none of them, that we can recall...

Issuers of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities pushed a record $435.80 billion of government-insured loans through the program during 2015, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis and ranking. Last year’s total Ginnie MBS issuance topped the previous record of $429.50 billion issued during 2009. The $435.80 billion total for 2015 includes securitization of FHA home-equity conversion mortgages and other single-family loans guaranteed by FHA, the VA, and the Department of Agriculture rural housing program from Ginnie pool-level MBS data that are not truncated. Production in 2015 hit its high-water mark in the third quarter with $128.23 billion in issuance, and then fell 18.0 percent in the final three months of the year. Purchase mortgages continued to account for most Ginnie business in 2015, 58.0 percent of the agency’s forward-mortgage securitizations. But a huge factor in the ... [ Charts ]