Banks, Mortgage | featured news

Mortgage finance giant Freddie Mac FMCC.OB said on Monday it would ask for an additional $1.5 billion from taxpayers due to losses stemming from the weak housing market.

The insurer AIG is suing Bank of America Corp to recover more than $10 billion of losses from a "massive fraud" on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest U.S. bank.

American International Group, the insurer that sold off several major units in its effort to repay its 2008 bailout, plans to keep its once-troubled but now rapidly growing mortgage-insurance unit.

Mortgage finance giant Fannie Mae said it would ask for an additional $5.1 billion from taxpayers as it continues to suffer losses on loans made prior to 2009.

Bank of America is reportedly willing to pay its way out of future mortgage and foreclosure claims.

Bank of America Corp and JPMorgan Chase & Co have started modifying tens of thousands of mortgages where the banks deem the loans especially risky, even if the borrowers have not asked, the New York Times reported on Sunday.

JPMorgan Chase & Co has pushed out its head of home lending, David Lowman, who was sidelined in February after the bank racked up billions of dollars in losses on soured mortgages and became mired in litigation over a wave of foreclosures.

The nation's largest mortgage companies are operating on the assumption that they will have to pay as much as $20 billion to resolve claims of widespread foreclosure abuse, an amount four times what they had originally proposed, the top federal official overseeing the discussions told state officials Monday, according to people who participated in the conversation.

The nation’s biggest banks and mortgage lenders have amassed a glut of foreclosed homes that threatens to deepen the housing slump.

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.