Category: Top National News

National Mortgage News, June 14, 2018–Kate Berry (subscription)Acting Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Mick Mulvaney hasn’t said yet whether he will keep public consumer complaints about banks, credit unions and other financial firms, but a former Ohio attorney general is gearing up just in case.

Wall Street Journal, June 15, 2018–Laura Saunders (subscription)For years, Americans could borrow against their homes to pay for a new car, college tuition, or even a trip to the Caribbean, and then deduct the interest on those loans. No more.

HousingWire, June 14, 2018–Kelsey RamirezHigher risk borrowers are growing more bold about applying for a mortgage, however it may not do them much good.

Mortgage Daily, June 14, 2018Primary home lenders refinanced 104,863 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans during April, according to a report from the two firms’ regulator and conservator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the slowest month on record for GSE refinances.

MarketWatch, June 12, 2018–Andrea RiquierThe Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday announced that Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. will pay more than $15 million to settle charges that its employees misled customers, causing them to overpay for residential mortgage-backed securities.

American Banker, June 12, 2018–Rachel Witkowski (subscription)The Treasury Department is expected to strike a middle path in upcoming recommendations on regulating the fintech sector, laying out how fintech oversight could be incorporated in existing rules without creation of an entirely new regulatory framework.

Wall Street Journal, June 12, 2018–Esther Fung (subscription)The mergers-and-acquisition bug has hit the real-estate investment trust industry, the long-anticipated result of the discounts that REIT stocks have been trading at compared with the private-market valuations of their properties.

National Mortgage News, June 11, 2018–Brad Finkelstein (subscription)Genworth Financial’s mortgage insurance business, which had slipped in market share, has more certainty about its future prospects after a federal government committee approved the holding company’s acquisition by China Oceanwide.

Bloomberg, June 12, 2018–Sarah Mulholland (subscription)As they battle the rise of e-commerce, U.S. mall owners are trying to clear their books of fading centers so they can focus on the most-profitable ones. That’s proving difficult, with just a shallow pool of investors who are willing to take on a declining mall and even fewer who would pay what the landlords want.

Forbes, June 8, 2018–Trefis TeamThe trend of a sequential decline in the total mortgage servicing portfolio for the five largest U.S. banks continued in the first quarter. U..S. Bancorp has bucked this trend over the years, though.