The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week held a one-day workshop on the single-family rental market, a sector in which Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could become bigger players depending on how much their regulator allows them to do. According to industry officials, both government-sponsored enterprises have proposals pending with the agency for financing single-family rental operators. The FHFA, Fannie and Freddie all declined to comment on what’s in those proposals. According to an agenda of the meeting provided to Inside MBS & ABS, speakers at the workshop included...

Leading Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week launched an ambitious effort to draft a bipartisan housing-finance reform bill, and possibly approve it by year end. Several lawmakers from both sides of the aisle cited a growing consensus about how that reform should be undertaken, with most agreeing on the preservation of the to-be-announced market and the need for an explicit government guarantee for MBS backed by conventional mortgages. Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID, listed...

Fitch was on top, although both companies had equal shares at 36.5 percent…

As much as the False Claims Act has been a formidable government enforcement tool against FHA loan originators, the statute is also being used increasingly against mortgage servicers, according to compliance experts. Within the last 18 months, the DOJ has expanded FCA use to reverse mortgages and loan servicing, according to Phil Schulman and Krista Cooley, both partners in Mayer Brown’s Washington office and members of the firm’s Consumer Financial Services group, during a recent podcast. While the Department of Justice has consistently used the FCA and its treble-damage provision to enforce FHA loan origination rules, the economic downturn and foreclosure crisis has put...

Over the past 18 months or so, the DOJ has expanded FCA use to reverse mortgages and loan servicing, according to attorneys Phil Schulman and Kristie Kully…

“This is a big step for them [Movement],” said consultant David Lykken, president of Transformational Mortgage Solutions.

Committee Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID, listed maintaining the TBA market and the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage among his important principles for reform…

Maybe GSE 'recap and release' is DOA?

The U.S. House of Representatives was a relatively busy place last week, with a handful of measures related to flood insurance passing the House Financial Services Committee, and a few other, small-scale, individual mortgage reforms being introduced. Among the bills passed by the committee was H.R. 2875, the “National Flood Insurance Program Administrative Reform Act of 2017,” introduced by Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-NY. It would make certain administrative reforms to the NFIP to increase fairness and accuracy and to protect the taxpayer from program fraud and abuse. The legislation passed on a 58-0 vote. Also favorably voted on was...

The Mortgage Bankers Association recently submitted a brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in a pending case regarding class-action waivers and arbitration clauses in employment agreements. The MBA and eight state-affiliated MBAs argued that class action waivers are critical for smaller employers such as independent mortgage companies. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear Epic Systems Corp. v. Lewis as part of its term that begins in October. Epic Systems, a health care software company, required certain groups of employees to agree to bring any wage-and-hour claims against the company only through individual arbitration. Circuit courts have issued...