Headlines

Morningstar Credit Ratings, LLC recently assigned its ‘MOR RV1’ residential vendor ranking to eMortgage Logic, LLC (EML), according to an announcement from Morningstar.

Job gains fell below expectations for the month of August, totaling less than 200,000, but wage growth finally began to show some upward pressure—but analysts are still divided on whether it will be enough to convince the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates in their September meeting.

Citigroup earned credit for $162.7 million in consumer relief toward fulfilling its $2.5 billion obligation under the terms of a July 2014 settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and five states for selling toxic residential mortgage-backed securities to investors before the financial crisis, according to a report from the settlement monitor released Thursday.

The lawsuit, originally introduced to a lower court by the City of Miami on December 13, 2011, alleged that each bank in question had participated in a decade-long pattern of discriminatory lending by targeting blacks and Hispanics for predatory loans.

The note holders for these transactions are not entitled to receive cash from the mortgage loans in the reference pools, unlike typical RMBS transactions. Rather, the performance of the mortgage loans in the reference pool determines the timing and amount of principal and interest the GSEs are obligated to pay on the notes.

A lingering effect of the financial crisis nearly seven years later, the number of borrowers who owe more than their homes are worth in the United States totaled 15 million at their peak. That number has been reduced to slightly below half by many factors, including foreclosures, short sales, and rapidly rising home values.

Ohio-based Safeguard Properties, the largest mortgage field services company in the nation, has announced the appointment of Pat Hoffman as assistant VP of operations.

Bankruptcy filings nationwide totaled 67,712 over 21 filing days for the month of August, the third-lowest monthly total in 2015 and a decline of more than 7,000 from August 2014, according to August 2015 AACER bankruptcy data reported by Epiq Systems. Filings were lower in August 2015 by 7,522 from the previous August. The total of 67,712 for the month was third-lowest this year behind January (59,087) and February (65,054).

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) has expressed concern that some banks and nonbank financial institutions are failing in the area of compliance with the Servicmember Civil Relief Act (SCRA) of 2003 and not providing members of the military with all the protections the law affords them.

While existing-home sales have seen solid gains in 2015, reaching levels not seen since before the crisis seven years ago, the rate of increase may be slowing down, according to data released by Auction.com on Tuesday.