The CFPB recently convened a small business review panel as per the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act of 1996 to discuss potential amendments to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, Kelly Thompson Cochran, acting assistant director for regulations at the CFPB, said in a recent blog posting. The amendments made by the Dodd-Frank Act expand the scope of information relating to mortgage applications and loans that must be compiled, maintained and reported under HMDA, including the ages of loan applicants and mortgagors, information relating to the points and fees payable at origination, and the difference between the annual percentage rate associated with the loan and benchmark rates for all loans. Other new inclusions are...
The CFPB intends to conduct a national telephone survey of 1,000 credit card holders and is seeking additional public comment and eventual approval from the Office of Management and Budget, according to a recent notice in the Federal Register. This survey follows an earlier effort last summer along similar lines. Both are...
Disparate impact litigation apparently is one of those gifts that keeps on giving. Once again, the Supreme Court has been given an opportunity to receive one of those gifts, as the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs recently asked the justice to agree for what would be the third time to take on the issue of disparate impact claims brought under the Fair Housing Act. CFPB observers will be watching to see if the bureau feels compelled to weigh in on the case, Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, et al., Petitioners v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc., as it has previously elsewhere. The TDHCA distributes...
The Federal Reserve Office of Inspector General has begun an evaluation of the CFPB’s controversial headquarters renovation budget in response to a request from Rep. Patrick McHenry, R-NC, chairman of the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, the OIG revealed in its semi-annual report to Congress. “To address this congressional request, our objectives are to evaluate, with respect to the CFPB’s headquarters renovation project, (1) the capital budgeting and approval process, (2) the scope and justification for cost estimates, and (3) the use of competitive procedures,” the OIG said. It expects...
Director Cordray to Deliver Report to Senate Banking. CFPB Director Richard Cordray is scheduled to deliver his agency’s semi-annual report to the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee on Tuesday, June 10, 2014. Cordray is the only person scheduled to appear before the committee during this event. His remarks will be posted on the committee’s website the day of the hearing, which will also be available for viewing live online. Look for coverage of the event in the next issue of Inside the CFPB. Bureau Plans Public Field Hearing on Mobile Financial Services. The CFPB plans...
How Not to Run a Website. The “links” section of the website of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee is so outdated, not only does it not have a link to the CFPB, arguably the majority’s favorite regulatory agency, it also has links to the Federal Housing Finance Board and the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight. Both of those agencies were subsumed and replaced by the Federal Housing Finance Agency back in 2008. Not surprisingly, there also is no link on the committee’s website to the FHFA’s website. Meanwhile, neither fhfb.gov nor ofheo.gov have...
Strong appetite from lenders for jumbo mortgages wasn’t enough to overcome the overall decline in mortgage production in the first quarter of 2014. Jumbo originations declined by 21.4 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. And the estimated $44.0 billion in jumbos originated in the first quarter was down by 31.3 percent compared with the same period in 2013. The non-agency jumbo sector has gained some market share during that time as overall production has declined even more. Jumbos accounted for 18.7 percent of total originations in the first quarter of 2014, a level not seen since 2004. Wells Fargo remained...[Includes one data chart]
Among the 12 questions that the FHFA asks the public to consider is this: “If the enterprises [Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac] continue to raise g-fees, will overall loan originations decrease?”
Agency issuance of new single-family MBS edged up slightly from April to May, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis of loan-level data. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae produced a combined $68.66 billion of new MBS last month, although that was only a 2.4 percent increase over April. There are some positives in the underlying data, however. First, purchase-mortgage volume increases outpaced...[Includes two data charts]
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