Lawsuits filed by the city of Miami against Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo were revived by an appeals court this week. The fair housing lawsuits allege a decade-long pattern of discriminatory lending that caused the city economic harm. The lawsuits were filed in December 2013. Miami claimed that predatory lending by the banks caused minority-owned properties in the city to fall into unnecessary or premature foreclosure, which deprived Miami of tax revenue and forced the city to spend more on municipal services to combat blight. The city made claims under the Fair Housing Act and state law. The city backed up...

Federal regulators and fair housing advocates are calling for continued vigilance in fair lending with the reappearance of mortgage redlining and loan steering. The return of pre-crisis predatory lending practices, like steering and redlining, pose new challenges to the mortgage industry and to minority communities, which have seen their home equity disappear with the collapse of the housing market, said participants in a fair-lending conference hosted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Credit scores raise...

According to figures compiled by Inside FHA/VA Lending, Wells ranked second among all FHA retail originators in the first half.

The CHLA noted that almost 99 percent of depositories are exempt from exams conducted by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Meanwhile, 37.0 percent of realtors indicated they have put together plans with their lender or title company to help even out the process...

M&T sought a dismissal of the lawsuit in April, claiming that its loan officers were acting based on legitimate, non-discriminatory reasons.

Some in the industry, including the MBA, feel the certification language lacks clarity...

The rating service predicted that in the coming months, more lenders will be willing to offer non-QMs that allow for debt-to-income ratios above 50 percent and credit scores as low as 620.

The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association emphasized its concerns about the GSEs’ single security initiative in a letter sent last week to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. A large part of SIFMA’s letter focused on a lack of alignment between Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The trade group believes that the FHFA doesn’t have a strong enough role in maintaining the policy and practice alignment of the GSEs. “This causes significant concern about the potential outcome of the initiative,” the letter said, adding that the effective alignment of policies and practices, to achieve a continuing alignment to security performance, is the single most important factor in the success, or lack thereof, of the initiative.

The FHFA has the authority to require the GSEs to buy chattel loans for manufactured housing, but it decided not to exercise this option...