The U.S. Solicitor General has asked the Supreme Court of the United States not to grant the petition for certiorari pending in Township of Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc., a case that raises the question of whether disparate impact claims can be brought under the Fair Housing Act. Mt. Holly involves a challenge to a redevelopment plan in the Mount Holly Township of New Jersey over questions as to whether it was having a disparate impact on minorities. Last summer, the township formally asked the SCOTUS...

The Mortgage Bankers Association and the Housing Policy Council jointly wrote the CFPB recently with a variety of additional changes to improve lenders’ certainty when they use the ability-to-repay rule’s Appendix Q to define the debt-to-income ratio for qualified mortgages under the general definition. The groups emphasized reducing what they saw as an over-reliance on subjective qualifications that could require lenders to use manual underwriting processes when they would prefer to use automatic underwriting...

The measure would amend the state constitution to authorize reverse mortgages for purchase of a homestead property in Texas.

Despite the vocal support of progressives, especially advocates of principal reduction of GSE-held loans, Rep. Watt’s nomination to head FHFA is far from a sure thing.

It looks like a sweet deal for Nationstar: Merrill Lynch helps sell its unsecured debt and then off loads some of its legacy MSRs to the nonbank.

Any successor to the GSEs that operates with a federal guarantee should charge the same guaranty fee price for all sellers, regardless of size, the trade group says.

We continue to hear reports that certain commercial banks are discouraging their residential loan officers to take the state test and get licensed.

Speculators have been gobbling up GSE junior preferred and common, hoping for a payout down the road tied to either the resumption of dividends or money that might come from a recovery fund.

The CFPB likely removed a noticeable amount of political pressure – but not all – from its back by responding to some industry concerns with its earlier ability-to-repay final rule. Last week, the bureau finalized amendments to the ATR rule that expand the legal protections for small lenders to make loans beyond the original rule’s main requirements, and it provided such creditors with a longer period of time in which to adjust to the rule’s restrictions on balloon mortgages. Under last week’s final rule, the CFPB...

Among the changes that the CFPB made to its ability-to-repay rule last week are revisions to how loan originator compensation is counted in the qualified mortgage points-and-fees calculation. Under the Dodd-Frank Act, points and fees on a qualified mortgage may not exceed 3 percent of the loan balance. Further, points and fees that exceed 5 percent will trigger the protections for high-cost mortgages under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act. Dodd-Frank also mandates that loan originator compensation be counted toward...