Last week’s $9 million settlement between wholesale lender Provident Funding and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Department of Justice to resolve allegations of excessive discriminatory fees on the part of independent mortgage brokers, has some key takeaways for the rest of the mortgage industry, top compliance attorneys say. “The first is that it obviously signals that mortgage lending is still on the radar at these agencies,” even though their attention has evolved into other types of lending products, “and they are still concerned with wholesale mortgage pricing,” said Melanie Brody, partner and co-lead of the fair lending practice at the K&L Gates law firm in Washington, DC. She also noted...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is working on a new proposed rule to ease the backlog in FHA insurance claims filings as well as to revise the department’s “curtailment of interest” policy to relieve the burden on mortgagees. The FHA expects to finalize the proposed rule in August this year, according to HUD’s new regulatory agenda, although the agency rarely comes even close to its projected rulemaking timelines. Specifically, the proposed rule would establish...

A federal district court judge in Washington, DC, has granted Quicken Loan’s motion to stay a government lawsuit until another federal judge in Detroit decides whether to proceed with Quicken’s preemptive lawsuit against the government. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Reggie Walton in Washington would give Quicken the opportunity to shine light on FHA compliance issues, loan sampling and the Department of Justice’s use of the False Claims Act to prosecute FHA lenders. Such enforcement actions have resulted in more than $4.5 billion in settlements with FHA lenders. In April, Quicken sued...

The Supreme Court of the U.S. this week ruled unanimously in favor of Bank of America regarding two lawsuits involving negative equity, second liens and Chapter 7 bankruptcy. While the ruling favors holders of second liens, industry analysts suggest that it could have an impact on loss mitigation negotiations between lien holders and prompt borrowers to shift to Chapter 13 bankruptcy filings. The cases considered were Bank of America v. Caulkett and Bank of America v. Toledo-Cardona. In both cases, borrowers in a negative equity position on their second liens sought to void the second liens as part of a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in favor of borrowers in such cases. “The court’s decision not only resolved...

Democrats in the Senate and the House this week re-introduced a regulatory relief bill that would grant qualified-mortgage status for loans held in portfolio, but only for smaller financial institutions. Banks and credit unions with less than $2 billion in consolidated assets which originate fewer than 2,000 mortgage loans per year could make loans that exceed the 43 percent debt-to-income ratio under the QM standard and still receive the QM safe harbor so long as the loan is held in portfolio, according to a summary of the draft. Depository institutions with less than $10 billion in assets would get...

“Without nonbanks, today’s sluggish mortgage market would be much less vibrant,” according to research released this week by two researchers associated with Harvard University. Their working paper stresses that implementing bank-like standards for nonbanks isn’t the best strategy to mitigate risks in the housing finance system. The paper was authored by Marshall Lux, a senior fellow of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, which is part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University; along with Robert Greene, a research assistant at the same center. They called...

Notice of the final order on PHH sent the nonbank’s share price tumbling four percent at one point. Regulators say the MI kickback scheme started as early as 1995.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were privatized, they would likely have to increase their capital from current levels and face increased borrowing costs.

The average closing time for a VA mortgage was 41 days, a reading taken in as of March of this year. A year ago it was 39 days.

Chuck Klein, managing director for Mortgage Banking Solutions, agrees that most of the coming M&A activity will center on small- and medium-sized shops.