A number of recent headline-generating fair lending settlements may have focused largely on issues of pricing disparities, but there has been a sea change among policymakers these days moving in the direction of greater access to mortgage credit, some industry experts say. During an Inside Mortgage Finance webinar this week, Jeffrey Naimon, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of the BuckleySandler law firm, said the industry is seeing a pendulum swing from the focal point of concern being loan pricing to loan access. “Especially during the time when subprime loans were available, there was a lot of concern that minority borrowers were being steered into higher-cost subprime loans,” he told attendees. “The adoption of the loan originator compensation rule by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau affected...

An increase in existing home sales during May offers further evidence of an improved housing market, thanks in part to first-time buyers taking advantage of recent mortgage initiatives. The National Association of Realtors said the number of existing home sales rose to 5.35 million, up from 5.09 million in April, and up 9.2 percent from the 4.90 million transactions reported a year ago. That was the strongest sales rate since 2009. “We have seen...

Sometimes lost in the hoopla over the rising nonbank share of mortgage servicing is that banks have fallen in and out of love with the servicing market for decades.

J.P. Wieske, legislative liaison and public information officers for the WIC, confirmed that the state has made an information request, but would not address content.

“With the Fannie [Mae] discount gone, I’m not sure it’s worth staying a member,” said this executive, regarding the Lenders One cooperative...

And these very same aggregators have made demands of the retail funders they bought the loans from in the first place

Early this month, when Freddie Mac made it automated systems free, Fannie said it would not follow in Freddie’s footsteps...

Apparently, the Blackstone Group recently closed on yet another mortgage company purchase...

A relatively small – even microscopic – percentage of loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in the past three years have been subject to a repurchase demand, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have made progress in improving their corporate governance structure and managing credit risk, but they still face significant headwinds, according to the FHFA’s annual report to Congress.