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The number of Puerto Ricans who fell behind on their home loans following the devastation of Hurricane Maria may be peaking while federal mortgage guarantors debate how long to protect property owners from foreclosure, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The rate of mortgage borrowers in Puerto Rico either delinquent on their loans or in foreclosure rose in November to 37.2 percent from 35.4 percent, according to mortgage data firm Black Knight Inc. That compares with 10.5 percent the month before Hurricane Maria slammed in Puerto Rico, devastating its power grid and slowing economic activity to a crawl. Some 95,000 mortgages, or roughly one in four on the island, are now past due because of recent weather events, Black Knight said.

Banks and rival lenders are butting heads over the credit scores used to decide millions of mortgage requests by U.S. home buyers, the Wall Street Journal reported. Now, a federal agency is weighing whether to step into the fight, which revolves around a longtime requirement for lenders who sell mortgages to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to gauge most borrowers using FICO scores. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s ultimate decision could have wide-reaching ramifications for the mortgage market and home buyers across the U.S. Many nonbank lenders, which in some recent quarters have accounted for more than half of the mortgage dollars issued in the U.S., want the ability to use a credit score provided by a company owned by credit-reporting firms Equifax Inc., Experian PLC and TransUnion. These lenders argue that the alternative score would open the mortgage market to a greater number of people and lead to more mortgage approvals, helping to boost home sales and the economy.

Lawmakers in both parties and the Trump administration are negotiating overhauls of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — critical to home mortgages but in government conservatorship since the financial crisis — that could keep them at the center of the U.S. mortgage market for years to come, abandoning long-stalled proposals to wind them down, the Wall Street Journal reported. Bipartisan Senate legislation set to be introduced in early 2018 marks the clearest sign of this reversal and shows how the companies, entering their 10th year under federal control, have proven too risky to attempt replacing. The housing market has seen strong demand in recent years, driven in part by steady access for many Americans to 4 percent or lower 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, thanks in part to a government backstop of the companies.

Xceligent Inc., one of the country’s largest commercial real-estate data providers, told its staff to “pack up their personal belongings and exit the building within the next 30 minutes” in the wake of its chapter 7 liquidation filing on Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported. “A chapter 7 trustee will inventory all company property and, where missing, may seek to recover such property through the relevant court,” said an email delivered to Xceligent employees after the filing. “It is therefore extremely important that no company property be taken with your personal belongings.” Xceligent, which provided the commercial real-estate industry building-specific data on such things as occupancy and rents, began the liquidation process following a bruising one-year legal battle with arch-rival CoStar Group Inc. Xceligent’s business results also were disappointing, causing its parent, Daily Mail and General Trust PLC, to write its value down to zero in recent months.

Real-estate developer Woodbridge Group of Companies has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it grapples with questions about its fundraising practices from the Securities and Exchange Commission, WSJ Pro Bankruptcy reported. The bankruptcy filing means thousands of individual investors, including retirees that helped finance Woodbridge’s real estate dealings, are at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in Woodbridge’s chapter 11 case. The bankruptcy filing may also send tremors through the Southern California real-estate market, where many of the company’s properties — with an estimated $650 million to $750 million — are located. Woodbridge owns the Owlwood estate, a 1930s Italian Renaissance-style mansion once owned by the pop duo Sonny and Cher. A Woodbridge affiliate paid $90 million for Owlwood in September 2016 and has it on the market for $180 million. Owlwood was purchased the same month the SEC started asking questions about Woodbridge and its practice of raising money from mom-and-pop retail investors.