The Mortgage Bankers Association has asked Fannie Mae to push back its June 1 implementation deadline of the GSE’s new requirements for lender “force-placed” insurance policies to allow time for the creation of a “workable timeline” for compliance. Last month, Fannie announced it would implement changes to its Lender-Placed Insurance requirements by overseeing the force-placed polices itself instead of allowing banks and other financial institutions to do so.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency should give consideration to creating a mechanism to allow small mortgage lenders to more easily appeal GSE repurchase demands, according to one U.S. senator.In a letter sent last week to FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-NH, said several of her small-business constituents have noted a “sharp increase” in repurchase demands over the last year.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have reluctantly directed their servicers to begin making payments next month in compliance with Chicago’s vacant property ordinance “under protest” as the GSEs’ conservator continues to fight the local legislation in court. Starting May 1, Fannie servicers will be required to include a written protest along with the ordinance’s $500 registration fee, according to a letter to servicers issued earlier this month. “All payments made to the city of Chicago, including vacant property registration payments, must be made ‘under protest’ by sending a written communication to the city with the registration fee,” explained Fannie. “This written communication must note that the Federal Housing Finance Agency determined that the registration fee does not apply to Fannie Mae, and that the registration fee is therefore paid under protest.”

Mortgage lenders closed a record $28.31 billion in mortgages with Veterans Administration home loan guaranties during the first quarter of 2012, breaking the previous all-time high set in the fourth quarter of last year. VA lending has been going gangbusters over the past few years as FHA’s market share has gradually declined. In 2011, the VA program provided more new primary mortgage insurance coverage than the private MI industry for the first time ever since the birth of the private MI business. In 2011, the VA accounted for 22.0 percent of the primary MI market, and 26.0 percent in the...(Includes one data chart)

Lenders should expect at least a short-term boost in profits from the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s recent tweaks to the Home Affordable Refinance Program, analysts say, but HARP 2.0’s long-run effectiveness to the pool of underwater borrowers remains an open question. Since January, the industry’s largest mortgage servicers, including Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase, have seen a significant uptick in new refinance applications for HARP 2.0. “This quarter should be one of the strongest quarters for mortgage banking we’ve seen in quite some time,” said FBR Capital Markets’ Paul...(Includes one data chart)

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week indicated it will be pulling out its disparate impact playbook as it launches an offensive against the providers of mortgage credit and other lenders it believes are engaging in discriminatory behavior towards consumers. “We want consumers to avoid the marketplace’s silent pickpocket – discrimination,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “We cannot afford to tolerate practices, intentional or not, that unlawfully price out or cut off segments of the population from the credit markets.” In CFPB Bulletin 2012-04 (Fair Lending), the bureau asserted its...

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase reclassified more than $3 billion of second-lien mortgages as nonperforming loans in the first quarter of 2012, a move other banks have copied. Both Wells and JPMorgan said that federal guidance from late January was behind the change. Wells characterized $1.7 billion of subordinate home-equity loans as nonperforming and JPMorgan assigned $1.6 billion to that status. “We do not view this as a material shift in the performance of these loans or the reserving methodology,” Fitch Ratings wrote. “However, increased regulatory scrutiny of second liens may continue to...

Losses from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s single-family credit guarantee business declined in 2011, but remained high primarily due to credit-related expenses, notably the provision for credit losses, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The FHFA’s fourth-quarter conservatorship report noted that the two government-sponsored enterprises’ combined revenues for single-family credit guarantees of $11 billion last year was more than offset by $40 billion in credit-related expenses. “Credit-related expenses continue to drive the single-family credit guarantee segment for the enterprises,” said...

Lawmakers in California this week pulled from their agenda a series of bills designed to help borrowers in a significant, if temporary, victory for the mortgage industry in the long drawn-out legal battles spawned by the mortgage collapse in 2008. The proposed California Homeowner Bill of Rights featured many of the requirements that have been incorporated in evolving national servicing standards. One new provision would require servicers to pay a $25 “fine” each time a borrower defaults; the money would go to a fund to investigate fraud. But two of the six bills in the package were suddenly pulled from...

Ally Financial Inc. is cutting back significantly on its wholesale mortgage business and moving away from its correspondent and broker channel so that it can focus more on originations through the retail and direct channels. In recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ally said the shift to the higher-margin retail and direct channels will not have a significant impact on profitability overall if both channels can assume the current volume of government-backed mortgages coming through the correspondent and broker wholesale conduits. “We will continue to evaluate this...