Campaign for Accountability, a self-styled watchdog organization, recently filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CFPB to find out what actions the agency has taken to hold Clayton Homes and its mortgage lending subsidiary, Vanderbilt Mortgage, accountable for alleged predatory lending practices.Clayton Homes, based in Maryville, TN, is one of the nation’s largest mobile home sellers, and is owned by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Said Campaign for Accountability Executive Director Daniel Stevens: “Clayton Homes appears to have been preying on some of our most vulnerable citizens. As the company expands its footprint to reach more Americans, it is imperative to know whether the government found any wrongdoing and, if so, what actions were taken.” The watchdog group...

The CFPB just made life a little harder for lenders that provide Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, otherwise known as reverse mortgages. Last week, the bureau put out a report warning older borrowers about taking out such a loan in order to bridge the gap in income while delaying Social Security benefits until a later age. “A reverse mortgage loan can help some older homeowners meet financial needs, but can also jeopardize their retirement if not used carefully,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “For consumers whose main asset is their home, taking out a reverse mortgage to delay Social Security claiming may risk their financial security because the cost of the loan will likely be more than the benefit they gain.” ...

The CFPB and the other members of the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council last week issued new examiner transaction testing guidelines for all financial institutions that report under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The rules will apply to the examination of HMDA data collected starting in 2018 and reported beginning in 2019. The guidelines eliminate the file-error resubmission threshold under which a financial institution would have to correct and resubmit its entire Loan Application Register (LAR) if the total number of sample files with at least one error reached or exceeded a certain threshold, the bureau said. They also establish allowable tolerances for certain data fields for the purpose of counting errors toward the field-error resubmission threshold.Additionally, they provide ...

Legal liability in the context of the so-called black hole in the CFPB’s TRID integrated disclosure rule remains a source of much anxiety for mortgage lenders, according to experts such as Rod Alba, senior vice president of mortgage markets, financial management and public policy for the American Bankers Association. “For lenders in general, [the biggest concern] is simply the liability that results from allowing the transaction to be negotiated until the last minute,” he said last week in an interview. “We don’t like telling the consumer, ‘You’re now three business days from closing; we can no longer negotiate and you must go through on this deal.’ That’s not pleasant.” Alba continued: “The consumer may say, ‘Well, no, that chimney has ...

The political calendar in Ohio may compel CFPB Director Richard Cordray to resign shortly – perhaps even this week – so that he can announce his candidacy for governor at the Sept. 4 Cincinnati AFL-CIO Labor Day picnic. According to CFPB watcher Alan Kaplinsky, a practice leader in the Philadelphia office of the Ballard Spahr law firm, Cordray is scheduled to deliver remarks at the event. “Assuming the speculation that Director Cordray plans to run for Ohio governor is accurate, that event seemed to be an ideal venue for him to announce his candidacy,” the attorney said in a recent blog post. The thing is, Cordray would have to resign from the bureau before declaring, according to Kaplinsky. That bolsters the argument ...

With speculation mounting that CFPB Director Richard Cordray could be out the door as early as the Labor Day weekend, the CFPB late last week announced it is amending the 2015 updates to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule. The bureau has temporarily changed reporting requirements for banks and credit unions that issue home-equity lines of credit, and clarified the information that financial institutions are required to collect and report about their mortgage lending. Under the rules that are scheduled to take effect January 2018, financial institutions would have been required under HMDA to report HELOCs if they made 100 such loans in each of the last two years. The final rule issued this past Thursday increases that threshold to ...

A spokeswoman for Fannie said, “While the situation on the ground remains uncertain, areas impacted are subject to change…”

The day before, Cherry Creek Mortgage issued a statement saying it would extend health care benefits to cover same-sex couples “effective immediately.”

The vast majority of Fannie buyback activity involves loans sold into MBS issued since 2015…

“Before a loan closes there will need to be [property] reinspections,” said Pete Mills, senior vice president of residential policy and member engagement for MBA.