Senate Republicans successfully thwarted an attempt by President Obama’s Democratic allies in the Senate to force an up-or-down vote on the nomination of Richard Cordray as the first director of the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “Mr. President, after all the harm caused to consumers by financial regulators, it is time that the majority stop using consumer protection as a political football and start taking actions that actually help consumers,” said Sen. Richard Shelby, R-AL, the ranking member of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee. “We can take the first step by reforming the bureau to make it accountable to the very consumers it seeks to protect,” he added. “Until that time, however, we cannot, should not and will not move forward on the nomination of a director to lead this massive and unaccountable bureaucracy.”

Federal banking regulators recently put out some fresh signals that they are listening to the lending community and want to collaborate with the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to better harmonize their regulatory, supervisory and examination requirements and procedures to help lower the compliance load for lending institutions. “Our dealings with the CFPB over the last several months have focused on consumer complaints and policy and exam coordination,” John Walsh, acting comptroller of the currency, told members of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee during a recent hearing. “The CFPB currently has in process several rulemakings where interagency consultation will be critical, and we are working on a consultation agreement that will provide the prudential regulators with reasonable time to review, discuss and comment on CFPB rulemakings,” he added.

The Supreme Court of the United States considered oral arguments recently in its second high-profile case this session that addresses key issues under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act.The case is First American Financial v. Edwards, in which the fundamental question is whether a private purchaser of real estate settlement services has standing under Article III, §2 of the U.S. Constitution to maintain an action in federal court in the absence of any claim that the alleged violation affected the price, quality or other characteristics of the settlement services provided. In this case, respondent Denise Edwards purchased a home in Cleveland in September 2006, obtaining title insurance through Tower City, which issued policies on behalf of First American. Edwards paid $455.43 towards the purchase of the policies (one for her lender and one for herself); the seller of the home paid $273.42.

The U.S. Solicitor General and a group of state attorneys general filed pro-borrower briefs in Freeman v. Quicken Loans, a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether a plaintiff has to prove that an unearned fee for a real estate settlement service was divided between two or more persons.The court’s ruling is expected to determine the ability of the mortgage lending industry to decide on its own what to charge borrowers at the point of origination.At issue is Section 8(b) of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, 12 U.S.C. §2607(b), which states that no person “shall give and no person shall accept any portion, split or percentage of any charge made or received for the rendering of a real estate settlement service in connection with a transaction involving a federally related mortgage loan other than for services actually performed.”

The FHA will continue to play a critical role in the nation’s housing markets in 2012 even as it tries to balance the need to extend credit while reducing its market share to open the way for private capital to return to the mortgage market, according to industry observers. That means walking a tightrope in trying to keep the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund actuarially sound while trying to avoid piling on more fees and additional restrictions, which could hamper housing recovery, observers said. “We can’t have an economic recovery without a housing recovery,” said Brian Chappelle, a mortgage industry consultant. “The philosophical debate about the role of government in housing should be ...

Total FHA endorsements declined 4.2 percent in October from the previous month and 29.7 percent from a year ago even as FHA refinances continued to slow, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of FHA data. A total of 88,060 mortgages were endorsed for FHA insurance in October, down from 91,963 loans in September. Of the October endorsements, 60,596 were purchase loans, down 9.0 percent from the previous month and 7.9 percent from the same reporting period last year. FHA refinancing increased 15.4 percent on a month-to-month basis but declined a whopping 57.9 percent from last year. Streamlined FHA refis were ... (Comes with one chart)

Ginnie Mae may have reported potentially inaccurate data to Congress about its exposures because estimates were not based on the best available data, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. The agency’s sensitivity analysis also ignored important data, which could affect the accuracy of its cash-flow forecasts, the report said. Although Ginnie Mae has revised its cash-flow forecast model, it has not implemented practices identified in Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board guidance and risk-budgeting guidance, the report noted. By ignoring such practices, Ginnie Mae’s model may not be ...

Ginnie Mae recently announced changes to rules implementing provisions under the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act for reimbursing excess mortgage interest to Ginnie Mae issuers. Under the revised SCRA reimbursement policy, issuers will be reimbursed excess interest payments on SCRA mortgage loans based on two different dates for reservists and active members of the military, said Ginnie Mae officials during an issuer outreach webinar on Dec. 8. If the borrower is a reservist, the reimbursement will be based on the date of the receipt of the deployment letter and reimbursements for active members will be based on the deployment date. Under the SCRA, mortgage lenders are required to ...

Only state-certified appraisers can conduct appraisals of properties securing an FHA-insured mortgage under a final rule adopted recently by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. At the same time, the new rule made clear that FHA would no longer allow state-licensed appraisers to perform FHA appraisals. The FHA has not been accepting applications by state-licensed appraisers since Oct. 1, 2008, following the enactment of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act. Previous HUD regulations required that an appraiser be state-licensed or state-certified in order to be placed on the department’s official roster of appraisers. However, HERA mandated only ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed to create a new system that would facilitate the transfer and streamline the collection of records under the FHA’s lender approval and recertification process. The new, fully automated records system, the Lender Electronic Assessment Portal, will assume full custody and control of lender records currently maintained by the HUD/FHA Lender Approval Files System of Records Notice (SORN), which is a manual and labor-intensive process. The current system contains records of principals or officers of financial institutions who are approved or seeking approval to ...