President Barack Obama and his advisors are scrambling to come up with ways to push the halting U.S. economic recovery forward, including the possibility of a major government mortgage refinance plan to help bolster the housing market. In a recent report, Deutsche Bank analysts said the administration has three options: remove or reduce the loan-level price adjustments that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now charge...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last week both “de-listed” PMI Mortgage Insurance Co. as an eligible private MI, a further blow to a private MI business that has been driven to the brink by the housing market collapse. Republic Mortgage Insurance Corp. was forced to stop writing new business this week as North Carolina regulators declined to extend a waiver of risk-capital ratios under which it had remained in the market. Together, PMI and RMIC accounted...

Only about 18 of the 247 “high cost” metropolitan markets will avoid seeing their FHA loan limits lowered at the end of this month, when the emergency loan-limit adjustments for the FHA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are set to expire, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. All 24 metro markets that now have loan limits of $729,750 (or higher in Hawaii) will see their limits dropped to at least $625,500, and some of these areas in California will see...

Law enforcement and regulatory officials may be undermining their odds of reaching a foreclosure-practices settlement with the mortgage industry because they’re grasping for too much, too soon, letting the perfect become the enemy of the good, according to some political and legal observers. Attorneys general in all 50 states and the Department of Justice and other federal agencies continue to investigate alleged irregularities in the foreclosure practices of top servicers, including Bank of America, which is...

After declining steadily since the end of 2009, overall mortgage delinquency rates spiked higher during the second quarter of 2011, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index. The index, which covers all loans in default status plus foreclosure and is not seasonally adjusted, rose from 10.31 percent at the end of March to 10.58 percent at the midway point in the year. All of the increase came in the…

Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court in Washington, DC, has rebuffed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s effort to dismiss a $10 billion lawsuit filed by a unit of Deutsche Bank AG over pools of mortgage loans made by Washington Mutual that later went bad. Deutsche Bank, as trustee for the securitized pools at issue, filed suit against the FDIC as well as JPMorgan Chase, arguing that one or the other should be liable for losses suffered by the pool from WaMu’s allegedly fraudulent or poorly underwritten residential mortgages. The trusts involved had been investigated by a Senate subcommittee, which revealed that internal reviews performed by WaMu had determined that “loans marked as containing fraudulent information had nevertheless been securitized and sold to investors.”

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Shaun Donovan said it was just “a matter of weeks” until there would be a settlement between federal and state agencies and much of the mortgage servicing industry over foreclosure practices in the aftermath of the “robo-signing” scandal. That was almost three months ago. Recent indications suggest the coalition of government agencies involved in the effort may be fraying. Last week, Iowa Attorney General Tom Miller, who is leading negotiations with the industry, suddenly dumped New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman from the coalition’s executive committee, claiming the NY AG had “actively worked to undermine” the group’s efforts recently.

The exact nature of the role of Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems in foreclosure proceedings may well be decided once and for all, as the U.S. Supreme Court has been petitioned for an expanded review of a decision that upheld the rights of MERS to the deed of trust, giving MERS the right to foreclose. Jose Gomes, petitioner, v. Countrywide Home Loans, Inc., et al. is the first major MERS case to reach the Supreme Court. “This will be the first case in the country to petition the nation’s highest court regarding the foreclosure fraud that has taken place, though its emphasis will be specifically on California law,” said San Diego-based foreclosure attorney Ehud Gersten, who petitioned the high court on behalf of his client, borrower Jose Gomes, in his dispute with his servicer, Countrywide.

Inside the beltway types have resurrected discussions about a possible broad government refinance initiative to more definitively bring financial relief to large swaths of struggling homeowners. But given the possible costs involved and the bitter partisan wrangling and brinkmanship seen over the latest round of debt ceiling negotiations, political observers see the introduction of yet another government mortgage program as improbable. A year ago, a team of analysts at Keefe Bruyette & Woods led by Bose George thought talk of a broad-based government refi program would ultimately go nowhere. They still do.

To promote openness and transparency, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has adopted a new policy governing ex parte (one party only) presentations, generally requiring public disclosure of such presentations made to CFPB staff concerning a pending rulemaking. The rule essentially requires anyone who communicates with the CFPB about a pending rulemaking to submit a written copy of the presentation (or a summary of an oral presentation) on the public rulemaking record within three days after the communication to the CFPB. The stated purpose of the rule is to “promote openness and transparency” and to give the public “access to the input that CFPB is receiving.” However, the CFPB’s policy has two significant exceptions that call into question how transparent the CFPB’s rulemaking process will really be, according to Ballard Spahr attorney Christopher Willis.