Despite the full implementation of the recently expanded Home Affordable Refinance Program in June and a refi boost that followed, Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s new volume declined during the second quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis. Fannie and Freddie issued $273.95 billion in single-family mortgage backed securities during the second quarter, a 10.2 percent drop from the first three months of the year. Thanks to the huge $305.21 billion of GSE business during the first quarter, the market was still 39.3 percent ahead of the pace set during the first half of 2011.

After months of high-profile publicly and seemingly endless prototypes, consumer testing and discussions with industry stakeholders, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week issued a detailed proposed rule to integrate the mortgage disclosures consumers get under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act. The proposal features new “loan estimate” and “closing disclosure” forms to highlight the costs and risks of a mortgage in terms designed to be clearer to consumers and to facilitate shopping. According to the CFPB...

As the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau works to finalize its ability-to-repay qualified mortgage final rule by January, industry officials again called upon Congress to press the bureau to broadly structure the terms of a qualified mortgage and craft a well-defined ability-to-repay rule, along with a strong safe harbor to help provide legal certainty. John Hudson, chairman of government affairs for the National Association of Mortgage Brokers, told lawmakers that industry professionals and “every consumer wanting to participate in homeowner-ship supports common sense underwriting ...

With refinance transactions accounting for three out of four home mortgages financed through agency programs in the first half of 2012, most top lenders securitized significant volumes of refi loans through Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae.But a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking reveals that a number of lenders man-aged to focus on the fast-growing home purchase-mortgage market during the first half of 2012. At the top of that list was Pulte Mortgage, the subsidiary of a national homebuilding company, where pur-chase-money mortgages accounted for 99.0 percent of...

Mortgage repurchase requests by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac show no signs of slowing down, and the two government-sponsored enterprises appear poised to pick up the pace with buyback de-mands targeting mid-tier financial institutions, warned Fitch Ratings. Fitch issued a note last week in which the rating agency cited signs of a potential shift in focus by the GSEs from the big banks to the smaller regional banks as a target of opportunity for increased representation and warranty claims.“Recent announcements by PNC, SunTrust and First Horizon that they intend to boost future GSE ...

For more than a decade, Countrywide Financial’s “VIP Program” approved nearly 18,000 sweet-heart mortgages to congressmen, policymakers and officials at the government-sponsored enterprises in an effort to curry favor in Washington and strengthen its business relationship with Fannie Mae, ac-cording to a newly released congressional inquiry. Last week’s 136-page report from House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chair-man Darrell Issa, R-CA, completed a three-year investigation by the committee of Countrywide’s “Friends of Angelo” program, which ran from January ...

Consumers who take out mortgages that are considered high cost currently receive special pro-tections from fees and risky loan terms. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week came out with a proposed rule that would expand what is considered a high]cost mortgage and provide more protections to consumers who take out those loans. Loans that meet high-cost triggers under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act are subject to special disclosure requirements and restrictions on loan terms, and borrowers in high-cost mortgages have enhanced remedies ...

As Inside Regulatory Strategies was going to press this week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was releasing a detailed proposed rule to integrate the mortgage disclosures consumers are entitled to under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act. The proposal is accompanied by new “loan estimate” and “closing disclosure” forms to present the costs and risks of the loan in clearer terms. “The forms benefit consumers by using plain language and a format that will help them understand their loans,” the CFPB said...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau last week issued a final rule to codify protections for privileged information submitted by financial institutions. The rule makes clear that an institution that provides privileged information to the CFPB does not waive any privilege it may have related to third parties, affirming what the agency said in January to the financial institutions under its supervisory authority. It also makes clear that bureau sharing of privileged information to another federal or state government agency does not waive any privilege that might apply...

Three jurisdictions in California are raising a lot of industry hackles over a plan that could lead to the use of eminent domain to seize currently performing underwater mortgages and force a restructuring of their terms. It’s a plan “more like Grand Theft Mortgage than a silver bullet” for the region’s housing woes, according to former Fannie Mae executive Edward Pinto. At issue is a resolution adopted last week by California’s San Bernardino county and the cities of Ontario and Fontana in which the jurisdictions entered into a joint powers agreement. Under the resolution...