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The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced on Friday that it is charging Bank of America and two of its employees with discriminating against Hispanic mortgage borrowers, HousingWire.com reported. The charges stem from a complaint filed by the National Fair Housing Alliance, which conducted a series of “secret shopper” tests in which Hispanic and non-Hispanic individuals, posing as prospective mortgage borrowers, attempted to get a mortgage from a Bank of America branch in Charleston, S.C. According to the National Fair Housing Alliance and HUD, Hispanic prospective mortgage borrowers were given inferior loan options when compared to non-Hispanic prospective borrowers. Specifically, the NFHA claimed that bank discriminated against prospective borrowers who are Hispanic by failing to provide them with information about loan products or by offering them loan products with less attractive terms, as compared to prospective borrowers who are not Hispanic.

House flipping, a potent symbol of the real-estate market’s excess in the run-up to the financial crisis, is once again becoming hot, fueled by a combination of skyrocketing home prices, venture-backed startups and Wall Street cash, the Wall Street Journal reported today. After nearly being felled by real estate forays almost a decade ago, a number of banks are now arranging financing vehicles for house flippers, who aim to make a profit by buying and selling homes in a matter of months. The sector is small — participants say that roughly several hundred million dollars in financing deals have been made in recent months, but is expected to keep growing. In recent months, big banks, including Wells Fargo & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. have started extending credit lines to companies that specialize in lending to home flippers. Earlier this month, JPMorgan agreed to lend an estimated $60 million to 5 Arch Funding, an Irvine, Calif., company that offers financing to flippers.