The CFPB’s recently released semiannual regulatory agenda indicates the bureau plans to remain on a robust mortgage-related rulemaking schedule, although not at the blistering pace seen one year ago when it issued a handful of game-changing rules for the mortgage lending and servicing sectors. The CFPB said it is “continuing rulemaking activities to assist in the full implementation of, and facilitate compliance with, various mortgage-related final rules issued by the bureau in January 2013, strengthening consumer protections involving...

Last week, the CFPB ordered a Missouri mortgage lender, Fidelity Mortgage Corp., and its former owner and current president, Mark Figert, to pay $81,076 to settle allegations it funneled “illegal kickbacks” to a bank in exchange for loan referrals. The bureau charged that Fidelity, a St. Louis-based non-depository mortgage lender, entered into an agreement with an unnamed bank in which the bank referred potential borrowers to Fidelity in exchange for kickbacks. The kickbacks were disguised as inflated lease payments...

Consumer complaints to the CFPB about their mortgages again dropped off during the fourth quarter of the calendar, but were still up 25.2 percent for the 12-month period ending Dec. 31, 2013, versus one year prior, a new analysis by Inside the CFPB shows. One pattern that has emerged over the last nine quarters is that mortgage gripes have been comparatively low during the fourth quarter, only to surge during the next three quarters, and then fall off again in the next three-month period. During the most recent cycle, that has translated into a 33.3...

Smaller residential mortgage servicers are going to be challenged by the increased costs of new servicing requirements from the CFPB as they seek to opportunistically grow through strategic acquisitions, according to analysts at Fitch Ratings. “Many U.S. residential mortgage servicers have been working diligently to meet the new servicing requirements,” the Fitch crew said in a recent analysis. “Many large servicers have already made significant progress towards meeting the Jan. 10, 2014, deadline, in particular those servicers...

The CFPB has released updates to its mortgage origination examination procedures and its mortgage servicing exam procedures. “These updates harmonize existing procedures for handling mortgage origination and mortgage servicing examinations with the revised interagency procedures that address the new mortgage regulations issued in January 2013, which have now taken effect,” the bureau said. The exam procedures for both mortgage origination and mortgage servicing now cover final rules issued by CFPB through November 2013. These...

Industry analysts predict that the New York ruling will limit rep-and-warrant claims on vintage non-agency MBS as well as future claims on recently issued jumbo MBS.

Radian's Loan Amount Estimator enables lenders that are capping their debt-to-income ratios at 43 percent to calculate maximum loan amounts and sale prices based on the MI product selected.

Refinance mortgages accounted for 80.1 percent of agency production back in 2012, but that declined to 65.6 percent last year and just 45.3 percent of fourth-quarter business.

Fannie Mae this week priced its second capital markets risk-sharing transaction, offering a total of $750 million in tranches for sale based off a reference pool of $29.31 billion in agency mortgages. The deal uses the same synthetic structure seen on previous risk-sharing transactions from the government-sponsored enterprises. Edward DeMarco, the former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, had been pushing the GSEs to issue risk-sharing deals using a senior-subordinate structure that would not be eligible for the to-be announced market. With Mel Watt now the director of the FHFA, non-TBA risk-sharing transactions from the GSEs could be even less likely. Laurel Davis, vice president for credit risk transfer at Fannie, said...

Ginnie Mae gave seller/servicers a heads-up on the longer approval times in late November at an “education summit” in Washington attended by both new and existing issuers.