Don’t hold your breath waiting for a legislative remedy in Congress to reform and/or replace Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The expectation on the Hill and throughout the industry is that meaningful action on GSE reform won’t occur until 2013 at the earliest, industry sources tell Inside The GSEs.
Industry groups continue to emphasize that servicer accountability and legitimate help for borrowers are key to addressing loan modification concerns that continue to plague the market. The crux of concern with modification programs is conflicting fiduciary duties, including financial incentives for banks not to...
Short sales, the bane of the home-purchase market for the past several years, have suddenly emerged as the fastest growing sector of the housing market in early 2011. According to new numbers released this week by the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey, short sales accounted for...
The interagency review of servicers’ foreclosure policies and practices found that although some process flaws were discovered, the foreclosure proceedings weren’t improper and didn’t cause undue borrower injury, despite the consent decrees’ more sinister portrayal of the findings, according to...
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Joint enforcement effort. Last week, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Presidential Initiative Working Group of the National Association of Attorneys General announced a cooperative enforcement agreement to jointly target abusive financial services practices, including those relating to mortgages...
Standard & Poor’s Ratings Service late last week dropped its outlook on the debt issues of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Bank System from stable to negative while affirming its respective debt issue ratings. S&P also dropped its outlook for 10 of the 12 Federal Home Loan Banks – excluding the FHLBanks of Chicago and Seattle – from stable to negative while affirming their “AAA” long-term counterparty credit ratings. …
Arizona. Foreclosure documentation standards legislation has been introduced that would require servicers to ensure that all foreclosure documents filed or recorded are accurate, verified or acknowledged by an individual with personal knowledge of the information contained in the documents (HB 2383)...
The Seattle-based law firm Keller Rohrback has begun beating the bushes for borrowers who were obligated to accept forced-placed insurance on their mortgages by Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase or other top servicers in the country...
Three industry groups are asking federal regulators to provide some flexibility for lenders in complying with Regulation B adverse action notices as they would be amended under a proposed rule issued at the end of February by the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Trade Commission...
Two of the mortgage lending industry’s top service provides, Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems and Lender Processing Services, will not be continuing business as usual, now that federal banking regulators have announced consent orders with the two firms that call for a substantial amount of remediation of significant institutional weaknesses...
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