MBA Calls for New QM Rules, Warns About ‘Regime Change’ Risk. The Mortgage Bankers Association is calling on the CFPB to develop a new qualified mortgage rule because the current one only works because of the so-called “GSE patch.” At the trade group’s annual secondary market conference in New York, MBA President and CEO Dave Stevens noted that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac currently are approving “a lot” of loans that exceed the benchmark debt-to-income cap of 43 percent that is codified in the current QM rule. That GSE patch disappears in 2021 or when Fannie and Freddie are taken out of conservatorship, whichever comes sooner...

Hensarling Slams CFPB, Vows Big Changes to Dodd-Frank, the Bureau. During a speech last week at the National Center for Policy Analysis, Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, pledged to push a package of pro-growth, pro-consumer reforms as an alternative to the Dodd-Frank Act, including clipping the wings of the CFPB. “At almost every opportunity, the bureau abuses and exceeds its statutory authority, which is already immense,” said the congressman. “The bureau operates with such secrecy, unaccountability, and bureaucratic tyranny it would make a Soviet Commissar blush.”As the committee moves forward with its plans for financial reform, Hensarling promised the Republicans will have ...

Industry Vendors Roll Out TRID-Compliant LOS in 50 Days. Three industry vendors, Open Mortgage, LendingQB and International Document Services, partnered to successfully implement a TRID-compliant loan origination system in just 50 days, exceeding their own projections, the companies announced recently. “We knew that our implementation timeline was aggressive, wanting to both implement a new LOS and prepare for TRID within 60 days,” said James Howard, chief technology officer of Open Mortgage, a multi-channel mortgage lender. "Our success was due to having clear implementation plans with our vendors and a team at Open Mortgage that was dedicated to the project,” he added...

Freddie Mac CEO Donald Layton said in a phone interview with Inside The GSEs last week that the phrase “front-end risk sharing” is not well understood. He said almost all of the credit-risk transfer transactions can be referred to as front end because the terms are front end. “The risk-transfer mechanism is back end, the risk-transfer arrangement is front end,” he said. “If the loan comes to us and is put in one of our mortgage-backed securities, it is in fact a back-end risk transfer,” he said, explaining that if the loan goes bad the owner of the MBS takes the loss and looks to...

The poor stock performance of this group has bloodied the water for mortgage IPOs...

Accelerated growth through the acquisition of mortgage servicing rights is an undertaking that remains challenging to the industry, said the MMC…

Over the past five years, the issuance market for securitization has fluctuated between feast and famine, noted one executive…

Marketplace lender Social Finance this month received seller/servicer approvals from Fannie Mae, but it remains to be seen just how active it will be in the secondary mortgage market. According to a spokesman for the privately held “SoFi,” the nonbank is now funding roughly $100 million per month in non-agency jumbos. According to firms that have done business with SoFi, it has sold the loans to OneWest Bank and Wells Fargo. To date, the online lender has yet to issue any ...

The MBS holdings of 16 top mortgage REITs were down 0.3 percent from the fourth quarter...

One observer noted: “Talk about a government takeover! This feels third-world to me…”