Even as the still-regenerating Home Affordable Refinance Program is already proving itself to be a boon for banks’ bottom lines, participants of an exclusive Inside Mortgage Finance webinar last week said so far there’s little indication borrowers are disadvantaged because there are currently fewer new lenders originating HARP 2.0 as same servicers. Since January, one month after the revised program took effect, lenders have reported intense interest and a more significant uptick in new refinance applications.

An independent House investigative agency has recommended the ethics case against the current chairman of the House Financial Services Committee be closed. The Office of Congressional Ethics reportedly informed Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-AL, that it found no evidence he violated insider trading rules in his stock trading activities and that it recommended to the House Ethics Committee that the case be dismissed.

A national consumer advocacy group, whose own investigation of FHA credit overlays spurred a federal probe of nearly two dozen FHA lenders, said it is keeping an eye on Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s use of loan-level price adjusters as a potential discriminatory lending practice. The National Community Reinvestment Coalition said it’s still waiting to hear from the Department of Housing and Urban Development about the results of multiple investigations HUD launched in December 2010 after NCRC found that 22 lenders set borrower credit scores as high as 640 for FHA loans, even though the FHA guarantees loans with scores as low as 580.

Senate Democrats are drafting legislation to force Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to expand the Home Affordable Refinance Program for underwater borrowers even farther beyond the newly unveiled HARP 2.0. The draft legislation by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Barbara Boxer, D-CA, unveiled last week during a subcommittee hearing would force the GSEs to waive representations and warranties on new HARP loans regardless of whether the refi lender serviced the previous mortgage.

Nearly all major lenders have reported increased earnings from their mortgage banking activities during the first quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports from 25 companies. As a group, the 25 public companies posted an impressive $7.606 billion in mortgage banking income during the first three months of 2012. That was up 39.0 percent from the $5.471 billion these same firms earned over the final three months of 2011, and it was a huge 177.4 percent increase over the first quarter of last year.The group’s first-quarter mortgage banking...(Includes one data chart)

Mortgage lenders that were less than enthusiastic about the first version of the refinance program for underwater Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac borrowers now see the revised initiative as a significant opportunity for 2012 and beyond. A recent Federal Reserve survey of senior loan officers revealed that 39 percent of large banks have begun actively soliciting Home Affordable Refinance Program business, although participation rates are lower among smaller institutions. Officials from M&T Bank and SunTrust Mortgage said during a recent webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance Publications that they...

Nearly half of the 56 banks reported that they offer “nontraditional” home mortgages, such as interest-only loans. Virtually all banks say their lending standards for Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac loans, as measured by credit score and loan-to-value ratio, have tightened since 2006. Key factors include difficulty in getting mortgage insurance, repurchase risk and, to a lesser extent, higher servicing costs for delinquent loans. Most banks don’t see new treatment of mortgage servicing rights under Basel III as a major deterrent to staying in the mortgage business. Increasing compliance burden is a bigger...

Bulk warehouse retailer Costco has added another item to its long list of consumer products: mortgages. Following a one-year pilot program, Costco of Issaquah, WA, has partnered with nearly a dozen mortgage lenders across the country to offer purchase and refinance loan products to the store’s U.S.-based members. The affinity marketing arrangement is not just pure marketing of mortgages but also aimed at ensuring that Costco’s members get the full value of their membership through high-quality service and savings, according to Jay Smith, the company’s director of marketing. Costco is no stranger to the...

Use of Blueberry Systems’ loan origination technology, RELAY, would result in an incremental reduction in lenders’ origination cost of $287.50 per mortgage loan, an analysis of the system concluded. Deployment of the RELAY loan origination system (LOS) would show a phased increase in return-on-investment in technology in which a lender effectively captures 35 percent of the potential cost benefit in the first year after implementation, according to an independent audit performed by MarketWise Advisors. The audit evaluated the effects of the implementation of the RELAY LOS to the work flow and...

Total fair housing complaints continued to decrease in 2011 from their 20-year peak in 2008, said the National Fair Housing Alliance in an annual report of housing trends, though the group seeks clarification on a number of still-pending regulations. Private fair housing groups, like the NFHA, investigated 65 percent of the 27,092 housing discrimination cases in 2011. Disability and race made up the bulk of complaints. Local statutes prohibiting housing discrimination classes not recognized by federal law, including age, sexual orientation and marital status as the bases for complaints. Most of the complaints...