Lawmakers speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s advocacy conference this week touted the accomplishments of past housing finance reform efforts but agreed more needs to be done to keep the conversation going and come up with a concrete solution. Sen. John Tester, D-MT, said while progress was made with the “Jumpstart GSE Reform Act” introduced by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, and Mark Warner, D-VA, reform seems to have dropped off the radar in this election year. “There’s a huge amount of uncertainty across the country,” he said. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is taking many of the steps that were laid out in the Corker/Warner bill, according to Corker, who...
Federal and state scrutiny of lender-placed insurance has turned into a compliance nightmare for lender/servicers in recent years as legal scrutiny of industry practices intensified, resulting in regulatory actions and lawsuits, according to a new analysis by BuckleySandler. The LPI industry and its practices came under close scrutiny following the mortgage crisis and has continued ever since. It began with the filing of a host of lawsuits by the plaintiffs’ bar across the...
A recent study by the U.S. Governmental Accountability Office recommended that Congress consider granting the Federal Housing Finance Agency more authority to examine third parties, such as nonbanks, that do business with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.Although nonbank servicers are subject to oversight by federal and state regulators and monitoring by Fannie and Freddie, the GAO wants to see greater regulation. It said in light of recent nonbank growth, the FHFA’s indirect oversight of third parties that do business with the GSEs is not enough.“FHFA lacks statutory authority to examine these third parties to identify and address deficiencies that could affect the enterprises.
Mortgages produced through lenders’ retail channels accounted for 60.2 percent of home loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first quarter of this year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of mortgage-backed securities data. The retail share was up slightly from 59.9 percent for all of last year and 59.5 percent in the fourth quarter. Sales of retail-originated loans fell 3.9 percent from the previous period, the smallest ... [Includes one data chart]
The transformation of the mortgage is continuing apace, as technology vendor Cloudvirga has brought to market its new intelligent Mortgage Platform (iMP), which it bills as the industry’s “first comprehensive digital mortgage platform, effectively alleviating the pain points, cost and time associated with the mortgage process.” The new platform combines three emerging trends in technology: cloud storage and security, digitization of images to useable data, and ...
Three megabanks – Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase and Bank of America – posted modestly lower originations in the first quarter of 2016, thanks in part to seasonality as well as continuing their cautious behavior of sticking to bread-and-butter conventional lending. In their just-released earnings reports, there was no mention of production problems tied to the controversial integrated-disclosure rule known as TRID. Then again, given their size and the fact that they’re ...
New surveys of potential first-time homebuyers suggest that many are delaying purchasing a home due to affordability issues and the accrual of non-mortgage debt. “In many cases, we found today’s buyers are taking a long-term view of homeownership,” said D. Steve Boland, consumer lending executive for Bank of America. “They want to purchase a home that will meet their future needs and understand that, in some cases, that will require saving more, waiting longer and ...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency decided to roll out a principal reduction plan for certain Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans as its last post-crisis effort to help struggling borrowers. It estimates that 33,000 homeowners could benefit from the program that will expire at yearend.The plan was given the go-ahead this week by FHFA Director Mel Watt, after a multi-year analysis by the agency. The FHFA said the program will provide seriously delinquent borrowers a final opportunity to address negative equity, avoid foreclosure and help stabilize neighborhoods that have not recovered from the foreclosure crisis. According to a press statement on the effort, only a select group of troubled borrowers will be...
Fannie Mae did a slightly better job than Freddie Mac in fending off the seasonal slump in new single-family mortgage business during the first quarter of 2016, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside The GSEs. A stiff 11.6 percent decline in purchase-mortgage business was the major reason why total GSE production of single-family mortgage-backed securities fell 3.4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2015. Fannie and Freddie securitized $90.18 billion of refinance loans during the first three months of the year, a 1.8 percent uptick. Freddie’s total business was down 4.6 percent from the fourth quarter, while Fannie’s was off 2.5 percent. It was Fannie that boosted its refi production, by 3...
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