During the final three months of 2012, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized some $52.72 billion of single-family home loans that were covered by private mortgage insurance, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis. That total represented 14.4 percent of the business done by the two government-sponsored enterprises during the fourth quarter – although there was significant variation among the GSEs’ top sellers in terms of the share of their deliveries covered by PMI. Some $8.42 billion of PMI-insured mortgages were pooled...[Includes one data chart]

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued its final rule on mortgage servicing this week, with perhaps the most significant change from the proposed rule being tougher treatment on the servicing industry’s dual tracking practices. However, the bureau threw the industry a few bones along the way. The CFPB decided not to require a single point of contact for distressed borrowers, but will require servicers to have “dedicated staff” to handle borrower concerns with their mortgages, something the bureau refers to as “continuity of contact.” The final rulemaking also essentially pre-empts...

Is the Mortgage Servicing Rule Next? The CFPB has a field hearing scheduled for January 17 in Atlanta, and the industry scuttlebutt is that the bureau might release its mortgage servicing rulemaking sometime the day before. Last week, the CFPB released to the press, on whatfs known as an gembargoedh basis, many of the details of its gqualified mortgageh/ability-to-repay final rule on the afternoon before the bureaufs Jan. 10 mortgage policy field hearing in Baltimore, MD. The actual final rule, however, was not...

The CFPB convinced a federal district court in Miami to require a nationwide debt-relief services company to refund up to $100,000 to consumers who were allegedly unlawfully charged advance fees for debt settlement services. State Attorneys General of New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota and Wisconsin and the Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection joined the bureau’s lawsuit, making this the CFPB’s first joint-enforcement action with the states. The bureau asserted that the defendant, Payday Loan Debt Solution...

The CFPB has apparently launched investigations into some of the mortgage lending entities that it had warned last year about their advertising practices, according to a leading industry attorney following such developments. If the bureau has in fact initiated such probes, it “underscores the importance for companies who receive warning letters from the bureau to promptly address issues raised by the bureau,” according to Alan Kaplinsky, a practice leader with the Ballard Spahr law firm. Further, “If these...

The CFPB is apparently under such time constraints to promulgate its various rules under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, it can no longer wait to publish them in the Federal Register. A recent final rule from the bureau says its final rules will now be considered “issued” on the earlier of the rules’ posting on the agency’s website or publication in the Federal Register. The CFPB says the definition of when a rule is issued has legal consequences, and the bureau generally intends to issue rules by...

Banks and credit unions generally are fully behind the CFPBfs ability-to-repay credit card proposal that is expected to make it easier for stay-at-home spouses to qualify for such forms of credit. The Truth in Lending Act and its implementing Regulation Z generally prohibit a card issuer from opening a credit card account for a consumer, or increasing the credit limit applicable to a credit card account, unless the card issuer considers the consumerfs ability to make the required payments under the terms of such account...

Mortgage banking entities and credit unions are trying to prepare as best they can for an anticipated onslaught of new regulations from the CFPB that will likely dramatically reshape the landscape of mortgage lending for years and perhaps generations to come. Part of their coping strategy is to enlist the aid of bureau officials themselves to help measure out all the new rules into more digestible portions. The Mortgage Bankers Association, for one, recently wrote the CFPB, suggesting the agency use a staged...

The CFPB issued a final rule it inherited from the Federal Reserve that generally extends the current required duration of an escrow account on certain higher-priced mortgage loans from a minimum of one year to a minimum of five years. To preserve access to credit, the rule creates an exemption from the escrow requirement for small creditors that operate predominately in rural or underserved areas.Specifically, to be eligible for the exemption, a creditor must:make more than half of its first-lien mortgages in rural or...

It looks like all of the clamoring that mortgage lenders have engaged in over the last year about the volume and expanse of new regulations has earned them a bit of a reprieve on at least one front. The CFPB now expects to issue its final rule on the combined and integrated Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act consumer mortgage disclosures in September, according to the bureau’s semiannual regulatory agenda released last week and in commentary included in its final rule on escrow accounts for...