Bipartisan legislation in the house to enact a transitional period for loan originators relating to the SAFE Act, a previous of a hearing on the Dodd-Frank Act's impact on homeownership by a subcommittee of the House Financial Services Committee, and regulatory implementation materials from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The Supreme Court will hear weigh in on fair lending laws and disparate impact in the case of Township of Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc.

The Supreme Court of the United States announced Monday, June 17, that it decided to grant the petition for certiorari in the disparate impact case of Township of Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc. Specifically, Mt. Holly challenges the position of the Department of Housing and Urban Development that disparate impact can be used to establish liability under the Fair Housing Act, even if there is no discriminatory intent. The CFPB, HUD and the Department of Justice have all previously gone on record as...

Bruce Schultz, head of mortgage operations for SpiritBank, offered attendees at the American Bankers Association’s regulatory compliance conference a useful acronym to remember a good strategy for navigating the rocks and shoals of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rulemaking: CADI: Coordinate, Analyze, Decide, Implement. “First up is coordination,” Schultz told participants in a break-out session at the conference, held last week in Chicago. “Various people that you’re going to need to have input...

The American Bankers Association asked the CFPB for more detailed guidance on the “temporary qualified mortgage” for government-sponsored enterprise and agency mortgage loans. Earlier this year, the bureau proposed some amendments to its mortgage rules under the Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act. Among them are some proposed revised commentaries regarding the standards that a creditor must meet when relying upon a written guide or the automated underwriting system of one of the GSEs, the...

The CFPB has published the first update to its exam procedures for the new mortgage regulations it issued in January 2013 having to do with appraisals, escrow accounts, and compensation and qualifications for loan originators. The exam procedures offer financial institutions and mortgage companies guidance on what the CFPB will be looking for as the rules become effective. “The CFPB recognizes that the easier we make it for financial institutions and mortgage companies to follow the new regulations, the better off consumers...

The CFPB recently put out two more small entity compliance guides, one for its loan originator rule and the other for its mortgage servicing rules that were finalized in January and kick in Jan. 10, 2014. The loan originator rule generally regulates how compensation is paid to a loan originator in most closed-end mortgage transactions. That includes prohibiting a loan originator’s compensation from being based on the terms of the transaction or a proxy for a transaction term. The LO rule also prohibits loan...

Eight lender industry trade groups have called upon the CFPB and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide written guidance that clearly spells out that complying with the bureau’s ability‐to repay/qualified mortgage rulemaking will not make lenders vulnerable to disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act or the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. In February of this year, HUD came out with its disparate impact rule under which liability for such claims can be established as per the Fair Housing Act. Back in...

Former top CFPB officials are banking on the widespread assumption that most mortgage lenders plan to avoid making mortgages that do not meet the “qualified mortgage” standard under the bureau’s ability-to-repay rule. Raj Date, the former deputy director at the CFPB, and three other high-placed bureau alums, Garry Reeder, former chief of staff; Chris Haspel, former senior advisor for mortgage servicing and securitization; and Mitchell Hochberg, former regulatory senior counsel, have created a new consumer finance company called Fenway...

“As lawmakers, it is time to open up our eyes and open up our minds to alternative models and a pathway forward,” said Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, at the beginning of a hearing he convened this week to consider housing finance models without explicit government guaranties. Hensarling, along with many Republicans in his committee, is angling to replace the government-sponsored enterprises with some sort of a non-agency market. However, a number of obstacles exist in that path, including the preference among Democrats and a significant portion of industry players for the GSEs’ functions to be replaced with some form of government guaranty. Most of the witnesses at the hearing provided...