The years-long legal battle that PHH Mortgage and PHH Corp. have been waging with the CFPB continues to take sudden and unexpected turns. One recent example: PHH filed a brief in opposition to the plaintiffs in State National Bank of Big Spring, Texas, et al. v. Lew from intervening in the mortgage lender’s case with the CFPB. …

With legal briefs continuing to be filed in PHH Corp. v. CFPB, mortgage experts on the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act see a bit of a silver lining, along with multiple warnings, in the handful of consent orders the CFPB brought against other industry defendants on the RESPA front. Earlier this year, the CFPB brought a $3.5 million enforcement action against Prospect Mortgage, accusing the firm of illegal kickbacks for mortgage business referrals from two real estate brokers, and in an unusual twist, a mortgage servicing operation. The bureau also acted against ReMax Gold Coast and Keller Williams Mid-Willamette, the brokers, and Planet Home Lending, the mortgage servicer – all of whom it accused of taking illegal kickbacks. During an exclusive ...

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives recently passed H.R. 1009, the OIRA Insight, Reform, and Accountability Act, legislation that would require the Office of Management and Budget to examine major rulemakings – those projected to have an impact of $100 million or more on the economy per year – by independent agencies, including the CFPB, prior to issuance. The measure, introduced earlier this year by Rep. Paul Mitchell, R-MI, would codify many executive orders and practices of the federal government related to the process of issuing federal regulations. Those instructions require agencies in the executive branch to analyze the impacts of regulations (including costs and benefits), to coordinate with the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) during the rulemaking process, and ...

The CFPB’s integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act proved to be the primary source of mortgage lenders’ quality control (QC) headaches in 2016, the first full year of the rule’s implementation, a new industry report concluded. According to a review of thousands of post-close QC audits performed by MetaSource, a Utah-based third-party mortgage compliance service provider, TRID accounted for 12 of the top 15 findings of QC issues. The six most frequent findings were issues with TRID requirements. The single most frequent issue involved correspondence of information listed in the Calculating Cash to Close table on page 3 of the closing disclosure (CD) to the information cited on the last ...

Individuals with bad or no credit who are thinking about taking out a mortgage should proceed with caution if a lender has offered them a subprime loan, an official from the CFPB advised recently. In a blog posting last week, Megan Thibos, a policy analyst with the CFPB’s mortgage markets team, talked about the homebuying process for people with poor credit scores. Thibos suggested that borrowers should review their credit scores, make sure their credit reports are correct, and work to rebuild their credit. Then she detailed various mortgage options available to borrowers with poor credit, focusing on FHA mortgages. That was followed by “a warning about subprime mortgages.” Thibos said subprime mortgages have significantly higher interest rates than prime ...

Mortgage lenders’ efforts at compliance with post-financial crisis regulation, largely from the CFPB, shifted their focus from fully implementing e-mortgage processes but also helped them develop the necessary technology to move forward with them in the future, according to a new report from analysts at Moody’s Investors Service. “Following the crisis, lenders focused on adapting technology to implement regulations such as the ability-to-repay [qualified mortgage] rule and the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule rather than on e-mortgages,” the analysts said. “The implementation of those regulations has, however, led to advancements in the technology needed to originate e-mortgages by providing, for example, a seamless data feed between the mortgage loan application and the disclosure documents.” Further, “Some lenders and servicers have also ...

Nationstar in the CFPB’s Crosshairs Over HMDA Reporting. Nationstar, the residential mortgage servicer, revealed recently it is being investigated by the CFPB over issues related to complying with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.... Non-Agency MBS Issuers Like the Legal Protection of the ATR. Congressional Republicans may be working on legislation to repeal and replace many regulations required by the Dodd-Frank Act, but some issuers of mortgage-backed securities are actually pushing to maintain some of the regulations.... Trump Executive Order on Regulatory Red Tape Unlikely to Apply to CFPB. Will the Bureau Comply Anyway? The executive order that President Trump signed in the middle of February that requires every federal agency to establish a regulatory reform task force to eliminate red tape probably does not apply to the CFPB, according to industry experts....

New issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fell 30.6 percent from January to February as the refinance business continued to weaken.The two GSEs issued a combined $63.67 billion of single-family MBS last month, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking. Absent a heavy refi flow, February is typically the low point in the annual cycle. A year ago, combined Fannie/Freddie production totaled just $50.05 billion in February. Production in the first two months of 2017 was up 45.7 percent from the same period last year, with big gains in both purchase (up 42.7 percent) and refi business (up 57.7 percent). But while purchase-mortgage lending is...

The government has until April 17 to prove that the 11,000 documents it is withholding are correctly labeled as “privileged.” This week, a ruling by Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney ordered the government to review the documents and release those that are non-privileged to the plaintiff’s attorneys in Fairholme Funds Inc. et al., v. The United States. The order came on the heels of a January appeals court ruling that found the bulk of a batch of 56 documents the government refused to turn over to the plaintiff’s attorneys, after being ordered to do so last year, did not merit privilege treatment. They included various memos, emails and presentations from the Treasury, Federal Housing...

Three prominent GSE reform proposals have been floated over the past year and the Urban Institute said they have more commonalities than differences. In an attempt to clarify some of the choices presented in the reform proposals, Jim Parrott, senior fellow at the UI, penned a paper highlighting the similarities and zeroing in on the differences. …