The settlement offer – which does not cover claims on trusts issued by Washington Mutual – will remain open until Jan. 15, 2014, but may be extended.

One lender that operates in the Irvine area noted that his firm has received several resumes from former Rushmore workers.

Under the new guidance, lenders must report to FHA all findings of fraud and material misrepresentations concerning the origination, underwriting or servicing of a loan that the lender is unable to mitigate or resolve.

In a new letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, the ICBA and 41 state affiliates say they want a “reasonable transition period of nine to 12 months."

Mortgage professionals who work the M&A trade contend that interest in residential finance is not waning in the least, but potential buyers are being a bit more choosey these days.

Republicans on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee appear to have thrown in the towel on trying to slow down the CFPB’s mortgage rulemaking locomotive. During a hearing last week, ostensibly to receive the bureau’s fourth semi-annual report to Congress, committee members from the Grand Old Party repeatedly tried to hammer CFPB Director Richard Cordray over the agency’s data-collection practices, with only a few brief mentions in passing of the bureau’s game-changing ability-to-repay rule with its...

Republic Mortgage Insurance Corp. – which hopes to re-enter the MI space sometime in the next year – on Friday agreed to a $100,000 settlement with the CFPB, settling allegations that it paid illegal kickbacks to lenders for at least 10 years. In a statement, the CFPB said RMIC “provided kickbacks to mortgage lenders by purchasing captive reinsurance that was essentially worthless but was designed to make a profit for the lenders. The kickbacks were in exchange for referrals of private mortgage insurance business from the lenders.”...

In a sign of just how serious the CFPB is about steering and loan-compensation issues, the bureau last week pressed Castle & Cooke Mortgage LLC into a settlement involving $9 million in restitution and $4 million in civil penalties to resolve allegations the firm and two of its executives paid illegal bonuses for steering consumers into costlier mortgages. The CFPB alleged that Castle & Cooke, through actions taken by its president, Matthew Pineda, and senior vice-president of capital markets, Buck Hawkins, violated the...

Once again, the Supreme Court of the United States has been denied an opportunity to weigh in and potentially set a national standard over the question of whether disparate impact cases can be brought under the Fair Housing Act, and perhaps the Equal Credit Opportunity Act as well. Late last week – just three weeks before oral arguments were set to be presented to the nation’s highest court – the Mount Holly town council voted to approve the settlement in Township of Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc. The case...