CFPB examiners have identified a number of unfair or deceptive acts or practices on the part of an unspecified number of bank and nonbank servicers of federal and private student loans, according to the latest supervisory highlights report released recently by the bureau. One problematic practice involved “one or more supervised entities” allocating partial payments in a way that maximizes late fees. CFPB examiners have reviewed how servicers allocate payments when a borrower pays less than the total amount due on all of the loans in the borrower’s account, according to the report. “Examiners found that partial payments were being allocated proportionally ... among all the loans, resulting in all of the loans in a borrower’s account becoming delinquent,” said ...

Consumer advocacy groups say the CFPB isn’t going far enough to expand mortgage industry reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The California Reinvestment Coalition and 41 other state organizations suggested a handful of changes to the proposal, each of which would likely add to the reporting burden for companies. Among the changes the California groups want is requiring loan modification data to be reported by banks and servicers, along with disaggregating the overly broad “Asian” race category to allow for more accurate reporting. They also would like to see the CFPB capture more information about languages spoken during a loan transaction, and have companies disclose if a borrower is going to own a property with somebody who is ...

Apollo's Commaroto said the REIT is bidding on loans, but is still considering whether to acquire non-QMs that way or partner with a lender to receive a more steady flow of product.

However, these same sources contend that Ocwen was successful in selling a smaller package of Ginnie MSRs.

Mortgage M&A activity remains red hot. We understand that RPM Mortgage of California is working on another acquisition...

Now that the mortgage lending industry has had about three months to comb through the details of the CFPB’s proposed expansion of reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, it has found more cause to dislike it than upon first glance. “While we support the purpose of HMDA – to provide information on the availability of credit in the home mortgage market – we are concerned that the proposal to markedly increase HMDA data reporting and coverage goes beyond the law’s purposes in some areas and will unduly harm competition and increase costs in others,” a handful of leading industry groups told the bureau in a joint comment letter last week. “At the same time, we do not believe that the ...

Fannie and Freddie have been exploring the adaptation of alternative credit scores for months, but have yet to take action.

The Fannie product also had less expensive mortgage insurance and allowed the borrower to cancel the policy once the LTV reached 80 percent of the home’s value.

Redwood insists the company prefers to issue jumbo MBS rather than sell whole loans, but the current pricing is just too good to pass up.

The Department of Agriculture’s single-family guaranteed housing loan program ended fiscal 2014 with $19.1 billion in loan guarantees, down from the record $22.4 billion in loan guarantees reported in the prior year, according to agency estimates. Month-over-month, Section 502 loan guarantees were up to $2.1 billion in September over August, ending the quarter on a strong note. 2013 was a record year for loan guarantees under the USDA’s Section 502 loan program, the largest of the agency’s single-family housing program, thanks to robust refinancing activity. Many USDA homeowners took advantage of the lower rates offered under a joint refi pilot program by USDA and Chase Home Finance, the top USDA lender, last year. Chase fully funded the pilot. In 2014, Texas led all states in rural housing guarantees with $927 million, followed by North Carolina ($880 million), Michigan ($720 million) ... [1 chart]