(This is Part 1 of a three-part series.)

Since its last effort to reform market practices was defeated by the industry in 2002, HUD has been promising to come back with some less ambitious, but hopefully more acceptable, proposals. They finally did, in March of this year.

The proposals have three major thrusts: one is to convert...

One of the fairy tales borrowers frequently hear is that a loan carrying an interest-only (IO) option is priced better than the same loan without the option. It is a fairy tale because the IO allows the borrower to avoid paying down the loan balance, which makes it riskier to the investor, and greater risk should mean a higher price.

(This is Part 2 of a two-part series. Read Part 1, "Transparency is king in U.K. mortgage system.")

Last week I noted that the pricing of mortgage broker services in the United Kingdom was...

(This is Part 1 of a two-part series.)

To gain perspective on institutional practices, nothing beats seeing how the practices differ somewhere else. Recently I looked at how mortgage brokers and the lenders they deal with operate in the United Kingdom. I have had invaluable help from Richard Hobson, a broker in the U.K. for...