This week, the Mortgage Bankers Association announced it was bringing the Mortgage Industry Standards Maintenance Organization back into its fold after a more than two-year stint with Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems Inc., a move likely to benefit the mortgage lending industry at large as well as the three participating entities. Management of MISMO transferred back to the MBA on Dec. 1, 2011, under the terms of a deal announced back in September by MERSCorp. and the MBA. “MERSCorp successfully managed MISMO during an important period of technical and technological development for...

The number of settlement problems as an overall percentage of market closings has increased in past months as on-time settlements plunged to 47 percent from 65 percent, according to the latest survey by the National Association of Realtors. Respondents to a monthly NAR survey cited problems with obtaining mortgages along with appraisal and inspection problems as causes of settlement delays and cancellations. The inability to obtain a mortgage was reported by 9 percent of respondents in October as causing a settlement cancellation, up from 4 percent in September. Asked whether they had any problems in...

A proposed radical shift in how lenders are paid for servicing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages would make the business less feasible and skew the competitive landscape even more than it is, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. In a comment letter to the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the MBA said the regulator and the two government-sponsored enterprises ought to shelve their controversial plan to reform servicing compensation. The FHFA and the GSEs have focused on two alternatives: a fee-for-service model favored by the agencies, and an industry proposal to reduce the...

Commercial banks reported a robust $4.91 billion in mortgage banking earnings during the third quarter of 2011, according to a new analysis of bank call report data by Inside Mortgage Trends. Mortgage banking income was up 52.8 percent from the three months ending in June, reaching the industry’s highest level since the end of 2009. Despite the improvement, year-to-date mortgage banking earnings were still down 4.8 percent from the first nine months of 2010. The surge in mortgage banking earnings resulted from increased loan origination and secondary market activity. Banks reported...(Includes one data chart)

The government’s effort to develop and implement a plan for bulk sales of inventory of government-owned foreclosed properties is slowly gaining form and substance, according to the summary of suggestions released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency released last week.In August, the FHFA, along with the Treasury Department and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, issued a request for information seeking input for new options for selling single family REO held by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA.

The CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac told lawmakers last week they have been working to manage all expenses prudently at the taxpayer-subsidized government-sponsored enterprises even as they sought to explain away reports that the two GSEs ran up a six-figure bill attending an industry convention in Chicago in October.Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Fannie CEO Michael Williams and Freddie CEO Charles Haldeman noted the GSEs’ importance in the current and future mortgage markets even as they cited their efforts to reduce overall expenses through money-saving cuts and improvements in operational efficiency over the last three years.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency last week announced two new outside hires to fill the slots of chief operating officer and the agency’s deputy director of division enterprise regulation.As the FHFA’s COO, Richard Hornsby will be responsible for the strategic management of the agency’s operations and will oversee the FHFA’s administrative and support services, including budget and finance, human resources and information technology.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency needs to be much more hands-on and engaged in its oversight of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, according to the Finance Agency’s official watchdog.The FHFA Office of Inspector General’s conclusion is not new, but the OIG doubled down on its criticism of the agency last week both in its Semiannual Report to Congress and in written testimony submitted to the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations.

Just in time for the holidays, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each announced last week that all foreclosure-related evictions from occupied single-family and two-to-four unit properties with Fannie or Freddie mortgages will be suspended from Dec. 19, 2011 to Jan. 2, 2012.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be put into “irrevocable receivership” with the Federal Housing Finance Agency tasked as their receiver no later than 18 months after enactment of a bill introduced in the Senate this week.Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-GA, introduced the Mortgage Finance Act of 2011 to “get the American taxpayer out of the business of bailing out the mortgage industry.” The bill would wind down Fannie and Freddie while creating a new regulatory framework for “high-quality” mortgage securitization for both single-family and multifamily mortgages.