Roughly 14 percent of the 12,500 mortgage complaints the CFPB has received to date from U.S. military personnel, veterans and their dependents involve problems with refinancing, and the issues they face have been changing over time, according to a new report from the bureau. “As the housing market has rebounded, we hear less about veterans struggling to refinance their loans when facing a financial hardship or imminent default and more about the problems associated with refinancing when they are using it as a tool to get potentially more favorable loan terms,” the CFPB document stated. The agency then delved into some of the specific gripes being lodged against mortgage companies. “We receive many complaints from veterans who believe they are ...

The leading Democrats on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the House Financial Services Committee urged Congressional leaders earlier this month to reject any Republican attempts to use so-called must-pass government appropriations legislation to scale back the Dodd-Frank Act and the CFPB. In a letter sent to Senate and House leaders of both parties earlier this month, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, said they will oppose ideological policy riders to year-end funding legislation aimed at rolling back the consumer protections of Dodd-Frank. “Specially, Congress must not include in end-of-year funding legislation any riders designed to repeal, undermine or delay any provisions of Wall Street reform, including those targeted at the CFPB and the ...

Securitization Group Meets with CFPB Officials. Earlier this month, staff and members of the Structured Finance Industry Group met with CFPB Director Richard Cordray and other senior officials to talk about the state of the non-agency mortgage securities market and some of the factors hampering its return.... Mortgage Lenders Meet With Bureau, Other Regulators, to Discuss Diversity, Inclusion. A small group of mortgage lenders recently met with staff of the CFPB, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to discuss best practices on how to develop and maintain diversity and inclusion programs within the mortgage industry, according to an account by the Mortgage Bankers Association....

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a largely seasonal decline in single-family business in October, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of mortgage-backed securities data. The two GSEs guaranteed $99.33 billion of single-family MBS during October, an 8.3 percent decline from the previous month. Most of the slippage was in purchase-money mortgages, which fell 14.5 percent from September, following typical seasonal patterns. The refi market held up a lot better. October volume was down 1.6 percent from September, while still ranking as the second-highest monthly total so far this year. That pushed the refi business to 60.2 percent of GSE volume, excluding modified loans.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency raised the maximum conforming loan limit for GSE mortgages by $7,100 for 2017, amid rising home values. The new loan limit, announced Nov. 23, is $424,100 and represents the first time in a decade, since the housing downturn, that the conforming loan limit climbed above $417,000. The baseline loan limit was established by the Housing and Economic Recovery Act and is recalibrated each year to reflect the changes in a national home price index. Until now, the index has not risen above levels set in the third quarter of 2007.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s strategic plan for the GSEs reflects a shift in priorities that has created more uncertainty. The GAO said the regulator revised the wording of the goals in the 2014 plan to align it more closely with FHFA’s statutory responsibilities. In the absence of an official post-conservatorship plan for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the GAO was asked to examine the FHFA’s actions as conservator in a report highlighting the objectives needed for the future of the two companies after the conservatorship. The report noted that the FHFA increased its emphasis on maintaining credit availability and foreclosure prevention options, shifted away from...

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, called for greater accountability of the GSEs and discussed reintroducing his Dodd-Frank Act reform bill in the next Congress, during remarks in Washington last week. He said the GOP’s PATH (Protecting American Taxpayers and Homeowners) Act would help end the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bailout. The PATH Act, first introduced in 2013, proposes to phase out the GSEs within five years. In addition to ending the “costly” bailout, Hensarling said the bill would protect and restore the FHA to its defined mission, increase mortgage competition, enhance transparency, maximize consumer choice, and break down barriers to private investment capital.

The GSEs have sold more than 59,629 nonperforming loans through August 2016, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s second report this year highlighting the activity of nonperforming loan sales and borrower outcomes. That number is up from the 41,649 NPLs that were sold through May 2016. The report, released last week, is part of the FHFA’s plans to make NPL sales data more transparent. The agency released its inaugural report in July and plans on publishing two each year. The latest report shows that the NPLs had a total unpaid principal balance of $11.9 billion, were delinquent 3.4 years on average and had an average current loan-to-value ratio of 97 percent.

The GSEs’ credit-risk sharing program has expanded over the years but not everyone has been fond of the transactions designed to transfer risk away from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Tim Howard, a former Fannie CFO, has become one of the program’s biggest critics. He said today’s credit-risk transfer program, mandated by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, removes the “normal economic discipline” of a company making its own decisions about which risks to keep and which ones to share, and on what terms. He said that the CRT transactions being done today are nothing like those done during his time at Fannie, before the start of the conservatorship.

With potential increases in loan production on the horizon, Freddie Mac introduced a pilot program aimed at getting more mortgage lenders prepared to originate manufactured housing loans and buyers prepared to purchase them. The GSE will partner with Next Step Network, a nonprofit specializing in manufactured home purchases, and eHome America, an online home counseling company, to implement the curriculum. One of the goals of the initiative is to foster new relationships with active participants in the manufactured housing industry. This includes national and local mortgage lenders.Next Step is based in Kentucky, a state heavy in manufactured housing. Freddie said the partnership with Next Step will educate prospective buyers of...