Housing Market, Wells Fargo | featured news

Two of the nation's largest banks released third-quarter results that suggest the U.S. housing market, a key factor in the nation's economic performance, is bouncing back as mortgage rates hit record lows and home refinancings surge.

Wells Fargo Bank will pay at least $175 million to settle accusations that it discriminated against African-American and Hispanic borrowers in violation of fair-lending laws, the Justice Department announced Thursday.

The new center of U.S. mortgage lending is a nondescript office building in the American heartland, far from the California subprime lenders and the New York investment banks that drove the housing market into a bust.

Wells Fargo & Co and the Department of Justice are negotiating to settle allegations that the bank illegally targeted African-Americans for expensive subprime loans, according to a source familiar with the matter.

In a ruling that may affect foreclosures nationwide, the Massachusetts high court has voided the seizure of two homes by Wells Fargo & Company and US Bancorp after the banks failed to show that they held the mortgages at the time of the foreclosures.

With one out of every 245 Minnesota housing units in foreclosure during September, news has broken that Wells Fargo, along with other big banks, may have helped push some homeowners off properties with the use of "robo signers."And the bank, with deep ties to Minnesota, has no intention of changing its ways.

Wells Fargo said it will shut down a unit that makes "non-prime" real estate, auto and credit card loans and stop originating nonprime mortgages, eliminating a total of 3,800 jobs.