Eric Schneiderman

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman today announced his plans to sue Bank of America and Wells Fargo for allegedly violating the terms of the national mortgage settlement — the $26 billion deal that resolved wide-ranging litigation over the banks’ supposed foreclosure abuses, HousingWire reported.

The suit would be the first since the agreement was signed in October 2012, according to Schneiderman’s office. [more]

Got a beef with your mortgage company or loan servicer? Lots of people do, and thousands of them have been turning to a Federal complaint hotline for action — or at least a quick response from the lender. [more]

From left: Bond’s Bruno Ricciotti and Noah Freedman

Bond New York, the Manhattan-based residential brokerage, is facing a lawsuit from Bank of America after allegedly defaulting on $750,000 in loans. The action comes a few days after StreetEasy, the listings provider, sued the firm claiming it failed to pay a hefty advertising bill.  [more]

Discoveries of misconduct among the nation’s largest mortgage lenders, prior to and during the foreclosure crisis, are continuing to add up, with the revelation that the nation’s biggest banks wrongfully foreclosed on more than 700 members of the U.S. military, the New York Times reported. [more]

Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan

A proposed $8.5 billion deal by Bank of America to settle claims of mortgage abuses by Countrywide Financial, which the bank bought in 2008, is in jeopardy as a new lawsuit alleges that those abuses continued after Countrywide was acquired, the New York Times reported. Three Federal Home Loan Banks, in Boston, Chicago and Indianapolis, and Triaxx, a collateralized debt obligation fund, brought the suit, filed Friday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan. [more]

Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke

The Federal Reserve’s housing policies have helped steer the four largest home loan lenders back to recovery, Bloomberg News reported. Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and U.S. Bancorp reported $24.4 billion in revenues from home lending in 2012 and expenses of just over $21.7 billion for settlements and loan repurchases, according to Bloomberg News data. Total loan originations for the year were $1.75 trillion, the highest levels since 2009, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. The increased activity was spurred by the Fed’s policy of pressing interest rates down, which led to lower borrowing costs and a spur of refinancing activity. … [more]

Banks were faced with an unprecedented number of lawsuits in 2012, and 2013 may prove to be another litigation-heavy year for banks. According to the New York Times, Bank of America agreed today to pay more than $10 billion to Fannie Mae to settle a dispute over mortgages that tanked during the housing crash. [more]

A Bank of America

Despite the fact that the Federal Reserve is pumping billions into the economy by buying mortgage bonds — making originating mortgages more profitable than ever — certain huge players continue to sit on the sidelines, namely, Bank of America, Bloomberg News reported.

“I get that they got their faces torn off,” Scott Simon, head of the mortgage division at Pacific Investment Management, told Bloomberg News, referring to losses large banks took during the Lehman Brothers debacle. “But this is a different environment.” [more]

Bank of America is now sitting atop $64 billion in mortgages at least six months delinquent that have not yet entered the foreclosure process — more than twice the sum of delinquencies held by the bank’s four main competitors combined, Bloomberg News reported. The loans add up to 3.3 percent of Bank of America’s total loans. By contrast, Wells Fargo has collected $15.3 billion of the same unpaid mortgages, making up less than 1 percent of its total loans…. [more]

Attorney Aaron Shmulewitz

It’s hard for many people to get financing to purchase a home these days, but harder still for residents of small co-op buildings, the New York Times reported. Small co-ops are now trying to convert to condominium, as buyers in these buildings are finding their options increasingly limited.

Buyers in small co-ops often have to put down as much as 40 percent in a down payment, and work with lenders, such as JPMorgan Chase or Bank of America, which will consider loans for co-ops under 10 units, unlike many other banks, the Times said. [more]