Home Loans

Interest rates for home loans have leveled off at a notch above their record lows, a Freddie Mac survey shows, with the 30-year fixed mortgage averaging 3.53% this week, the same as last week. The survey of lenders, released Thursday, showed the 15-year fixed-rate mortgage averaging 2.77%, down from 2.81% a week ago. The start rates for adjustable mortgages also declined. Freddie Mac asks lenders each week what terms they are offering to well-qualified borrowers. In the current survey the 30-year borrowers would have paid an average 0.8% of the loan amount in upfront lender fees and points, and 0.7% of the loan amount for the 15-year loan.

Helping home prices rise is a drop in home foreclosure activity. That trend continued throughout the Los Angeles area in November, new data show. The rate at which lenders have foreclosed on mortgages in the Los Angeles area fell to 1.67% of all home loans, data firm CoreLogic said. That compares to 2.67% the same month a year prior.  That rate was lower than the national average, which was 2.97% in November. Fewer people in the Los Angeles area also fell behind on their mortgages, according to the data.

Interest rates on fixed mortgages rose this week, according to Freddie Mac, with lenders offering the 30-year home loan at an average 3.42%, up from 3.38% a week ago. The rate for a 15-year fixed mortgage, a popular option for people refinancing home loans, was 2.71%, up from 2.66%. Borrowers would have paid 0.7% of the loan amount to lenders in upfront fees and points to obtain the rates, Freddie Mac said Thursday morning in its weekly report . The government-backed finance giant said the starting interest rates on variable loans were unchanged.

KB Home and Nationstar Mortgage Holdings Inc. are forming a joint venture that will offer home loans to KB customers across the country, so they can shop for a house and a mortgage at the same time. Nationstar, of Lewisville, Texas, agreed last year to be KB's preferred lender, providing representatives to pitch mortgages to potential buyers at KB's tracts of new homes. Those employees will now work for Home Community Mortgage, the new company jointly owned by KB and Nationstar. Jeffrey Mezger, president and chief executive of Los Angeles-based KB, called the venture a “natural progression” for the nation's fifth-largest home builder.

NEW YORK - Bank of America Corp.'s and Citigroup Inc.'s lackluster earnings led Wall Street to question how long it will take two of the country's biggest banks to emerge from the shadow of the financial crisis. While BofA's fourth-quarter profit fell 63% and Citi's climbed 25%, both disappointed investors who are growing impatient with the firms' efforts to cleanse their books of problem mortgages and prune sagging businesses. Both banks' bottom lines sank under the weight of settlements and steep legal expenses that only seem to keep mounting as state and federal officials seek payback for the housing meltdown that led up to the financial crisis.

U.S. 30-year mortgage rate data by YCharts Fixed mortgage rates hovered near their record lows this week, Freddie Mac said, with lenders offering the 30-year fixed home loan at an average of 3.34%, down from 3.35%  a week ago. The 15-year fixed loan, popular with refinancers, dropped from 2.65% to 2.64% in Freddie Mac's survey of lenders, taken Monday through Wednesday. Borrowers would have paid 0.7% of the loan amount in upfront lender fees and discount points to obtain the rates.

Former IndyMac Bancorp Chairman and Chief Executive Michael W. Perry has agreed to pay $1 million and be banished from the banking industry to settle government claims that he overloaded the Pasadena thrift with risky home loans before it collapsed in July 2008. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is dropping its $600-million negligence lawsuit against Perry in return for the personal payment and the right to seek $11 million from IndyMac's insurance carriers, Perry's lawyers and the FDIC said in statements released Friday.

Accusing Wells Fargo & Co. of reneging on a sweeping mortgage-modification deal, a lawyer for troubled homeowners is trying to reopen a lawsuit involving risky "pick-a-pay" loans written during the housing bubble. Legal filings last week said Wells had failed to provide wide-ranging reductions of loan balances to delinquent borrowers, as it had promised two years ago, when it settled a combined national class-action suit. A bank spokeswoman disputed the filing, calling it riddled with errors.