There has been a resurgence of city lawsuits lately against major banks seeking to recover lost property tax revenues, which city officials say were needed to pay for expensive foreclosure-related city services. The latest in these lawsuits was filed by the City of Los Angeles against JPMorgan Chase alleging discriminatory mortgage lending led to a wave of foreclosures that continues to diminish revenue for basic city services. The new litigation against Chase comes...

When it comes to the legal theory of disparate impact and the Supreme Court of the United States, perhaps the third time around will be the charm. Recently, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs requested the nation’s highest court to agree once again to take on the issue of disparate impact under the Fair Housing Act. The questions presented to the high court in Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, et al., Petitioners v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc. are...

While lenders affiliated with homebuilders tend to lend to riskier borrowers than other originators, their mortgages actually perform better, according to new research published by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. The researchers suggest that the stronger performance is related to the hands-on nature of homebuilder lending, among other factors. The Chicago Fed published the findings in a study authored by Sumit Agarwal, Gene Amromin, Claudine Gartenberg, Anna Paulson and Sriram Villupuram, who note that their findings run counter to assumptions about the quality of builder-affiliate originations. “At first glance, the allegations of the nefarious role played by the homebuilders in the crisis are consistent...

Industry observers believe that FHFA Director Mel Watt – who has been on the job since early January – wants to open up the “credit box” for low- and moderate-income borrowers.

The good news for the mortgage industry is that the bulk of Dodd-Frank-required mortgage rules have already been issued.

Notably absent from Watt’s first major policy speech as FHFA director last month was any mention of the housing trust funds.

Fairholme still owns a ton of GSE stock. At press time Wednesday, Fannie common was trading at $4.77. The most Fairholme ever paid for Fannie common was $2.07. Sweet…

Some 14 percent of Green Tree’s $196 billion servicing portfolio is subject to the national servicing settlement, according to Fitch.

Treasury and the FHFA not only acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in executing the Third Amendment to the Preferred Stock Purchase Agreements with the GSEs, the agencies ignored “salient data,” including Fannie’s and Freddie’s tens of billions of dollars in deferred tax assets.

Some in the industry are concerned that HAMP interest-rate resets, which begin later this year, could cause defaults on modified loans to increase, lowering the number of successful modifications under the program.