Mortgage, Real Estate | featured news

Bank of America Corp is working to improve profits by reducing its number of problem mortgages and cutting other costs, Chief Executive Brian Moynihan told shareholders on Wednesday. Moynihan, speaking at the company's annual meeting in downtown Charlotte, said the mortgage business of the largest U.S. bank by assets is "still struggling mightily" as it slowly crawls out from under the billions in soured home loans.

No-money-down mortgages are coming back, but it may take a rocket scientist to get one.

Bank regulators announced settlements on Wednesday with the largest home lenders over allegations of shoddy foreclosure practices, but the pacts did not include financial penalties.

The number of Americans who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth rose at the end of last year, preventing many people from selling their homes in an already weak housing market.

Federal regulators and the top law enforcement officers in all fifty states are eyeing big changes to the dysfunctional home loan industry. If these officials have their way, borrowers who take out home loans and the investors who buy them will work closer together and find common ground to minimize foreclosures, while the middle men who are supposed to be performing that job will see their power diminished.

The average U.S. borrower in the throes of foreclosure hasn't made a mortgage payment in 17 months, up from nearly 11 months two years ago.

Bank of America Corp's Countrywide mortgage unit has been sued by investors claiming they were victimized in a "massive fraud" when they bought mortgage-backed securities.

JP Morgan Chase & Co. has overcharged thousands of military families for their mortgages, including families of troops fighting in Afghanistan, NBC News has learned.

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.

Regulators have opened a new line of inquiry in their mortgage foreclosure probe and are asking big Wall Street banks about the beginning stages of mortgage securitization, two sources familiar with the probe said.