Two academics assert in a new white paper that the Dodd-Frank Act mortgage rules promulgated by the CFPB that were designed to protect consumers actually harmed middle-class borrowers and benefitted the wealthy. “Dodd-Frank aimed at reducing mortgage fees and abuses against vulnerable borrowers, but increased the costs of originating mortgages,” said University of Maryland professors Francesco D’Acunto and Alberto Rossi in their new paper. “We find it triggered a substantial redistribution of credit from middle-class households to wealthy households.” A back-of-the-envelope calculation that keeps constant the mortgage demand characteristics of 2010 shows financial institutions reduced their production of medium-sized loans by 15 percent in 2014, and increased making large loans by 21 percent, they said. D’Acunto and Rossi also found ...
CFPB Director Richard Cordray appeared before credit union representatives recently and touted the performance of their industry’s mortgage operations under the bureau’s mortgage rules. “Our first set of mortgage rules have been in place for over two and a half years, and we are seeing great progress,” Cordray told the National Association of Federal Credit Unions. “In 2014, the first year of our ability-to-repay rule on mortgage origination, owner-occupied home purchase mortgages increased by 4 percent, according to HMDA data, and growth was even stronger last year: home purchase mortgages increased by an estimated 13 percent to 14 percent.” In fact, as it turns out, the mortgage industry overall actually did slightly better than Cordray said. According to analysis of ...
Mortgage lending at community banks rose last year and is up over the last few years, according to a joint survey by the Federal Reserve and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors. However, that trend may not hold, thanks in part to a drop in demand and to a departure from the sector because of the CFPB’s mortgage rules. “Mortgage lending grew by more than 6 percent for community banks in our survey, which was somewhat higher than the comparable growth rate for all community banks over an overlapping period,” the agencies said. It was also higher than the comparable rate across the entire industry. Over a more-extended period, from December 2013 to March 2016, growth in 1-4 family residential ...
SFIG Meets With CFPB Officials to Discuss TRID. Staff and key members of the Structured Finance Industry Group, a securitization trade group, recently met with regulators at the CFPB to discuss the bureau’s integrated disclosure rule known in as TRID and reviewed the trade group’s RMBS (residential mortgage-backed securities) 3.0 TRID Compliance Review Scope document.... CFPB Releases Updated Exam Procedures for the Military Lending Act. Late last week, the bureau issued the revised procedures its examiners will use in identifying consumer harm and risks related to the Military Lending Act rule, which was updated in July 2015...
“We hope that you will help us to push back on current efforts to gift the proprietary infrastructure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the big banks,” the clergymen write.