Fannie Mae has not treated its foreclosed properties in African-American and Latino communities the same as those in predominately white neighborhoods, according to a federal lawsuit filed this week by the National Fair Housing Alliance. The NFHA, along with 20 fair housing and civil rights groups, said its investigation found signs of racial discrimination when it comes to the upkeep and marketing of Fannie’s real estate-owned properties in 38 metropolitan areas across the country. These properties in minority neighborhoods were blighted...
Despite higher interest rates, publicly traded mortgage stocks have been rising since the election, but market watchers are cautious that recent gains could evaporate quickly. “Two things are going on here,” said Henry Coffey, an equities analyst at Wedbush Securities. “We’ve had a massive market rally, especially in financial stocks. But the general consensus is that the new administration is going to be less punitive than the current one.” Coffey added...[Includes one data table]
During his successful campaign for the White House, then-candidate Donald Trump won applause and support from the business community for his promise to substantially cut back on federal regulations. Many in the mortgage lending community had hopes the plan would include some relief from the mortgage regulations issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Among other things, Trump said he would issue a temporary moratorium on “new agency regulations that are not compelled by Congress or public safety [and] cancel immediately all illegal and overreaching executive orders.” Richard Horn, who worked on the CFPB’s integrated-disclosure rulemaking known as TRID, said...
The one weak spot in the mortgage market during the third quarter was in traditional jumbo originations, a trend that was reinforced by a significant increase in production of agency mortgages in high-cost markets that exceeded $417,000. An estimated $101.0 billion of non-agency jumbo home loans were originated during the third quarter, down 1.9 percent from the previous quarter. At the same time, production of conforming-jumbo mortgages – loans greater than $417,000 that were securitized by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae – jumped 27.7 percent from the second to the third quarter. Some of the disparity is...[Includes three data tables]
Then there’s the case of Bill Dallas, the industry veteran who runs Skyline Home Loans in Calabasas, CA. “Winter is coming,” he said in a brief email exchange with Inside Mortgage Finance.