The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is poised to formally launch its e-closing pilot project shortly, with an eye towards simplifying the mortgage closing process for both borrowers and lenders and eliminating many of the “pain points” associated with it. “We are looking to kick off the pilot later this year and run it for about three months,” said Brian Webster, program manager for the bureau’s Office of Mortgage Markets, during a meeting of the CFPB’s Community Bank Advisory Council ...

Credit Plus, a provider of credit verification and automated loan file review services, has announced a new software application that will help lenders of agency loans defend against potential losses, indemnifications and repurchase demands. The program, QC Review, enables lenders to run pre-closing quality assurance and post-closing quality-control tests to ensure that loans they originate meet Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA/VA requirements. QC Review’s comprehensive ...

In fact, nearly a fifth of the repurchases involved loans sold to the GSEs by Lehman Brothers or its related mortgage businesses.

Under the proposal, lenders would be required to report the originations of QMs and non-QMs.

Timothy Zimmerman, president and CEO of Standard Bank, said he’s bothered by too small a percentage of lenders making loans outside the QM parameters.

Zandi and deRitis believe that the FHA is on track to be able to lower its mortgage insurance premiums by 50 basis points to an average of 120 basis points for total upfront and annual premiums.

According to one analyst, "Ackman is reloading the boat with the extra cash he has on hand. Hopefully, others will join him.”

More trouble for Walter Investment Management? Meanwhile, according to NTC, as many as 490,000 homeowners could be affected by faulty servicer database records.

Mortgage lenders continued to work through a huge pile of repurchase demands related to loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the housing market crash. The two government-sponsored enterprises reported a total of $1.269 billion of repurchases by sellers during the second quarter of 2014, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter, of Securities and Exchange Commission filings by the two GSEs. That compared to just $522.5 million in repurchases during the first quarter of this year. As has been the case since the buyback issue mushroomed several years ago, most of the second-quarter repurchases focused...[Includes one data chart]

Mid-sized commercial banks are starting to turn up as potential buyers of mortgage banking franchises again, a trend that has not been seen in years, according to investment bankers that ply their trade in the space. “I’m working on two deals right now where the buyers are well capitalized commercial banks,” said Larry Charbonneau, a principal in Charbonneau & Associates, a boutique advisory firm based in Spring, TX. Charbonneau said he cannot identify the buyers due to non-disclosure agreements, but hopes to eventually. He noted that both banks have assets in the $2 billion to $3 billion range. “One of the banks isn’t...