Lender Violated FHA’s ‘Outside Employment’ Rule. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General recommended action against a Las Vegas FHA lender for violating the agency’s rules on outside employment and timely quality control reviews. An OIG audit of All Western Mortgage, a former loan correspondent and current nonsupervised FHA lender, found that two of the company’s loan officers were allowed to moonlight as real estate agents. To their credit, the two loan officers originated just ...
Warehouse lenders that finance nonbank mortgage firms continue to report strong commitment volumes and usage rates, but there is an underlying fear that the good times won’t last forever. Nevertheless, that’s not stopping their telephones from ringing. “We’re seeing more requests for increases in lines than decreases,” said a senior manager who spoke under the condition his name not be used. “Most of our lines are holding steady.” Bob Garrett, executive vice president of mortgage warehouse lending at First Tennessee Bank, said...[Includes one data chart]
Through the first quarter of 2013, 1.1 million borrowers have received permanent HAMP modifications, well below the 3 million to 4 million the Obama administration projected when launching the program in 2009.
The revised rule excludes from the calculation of points and fees paid by a consumer to a mortgage broker when that payment has already been counted toward the points-and-fees thresholds as part of the finance charge.
The mortgage industry is banking heavily on a resurging purchase-mortgage market to help ease the pain of declining refinance volume in 2013 and beyond, and the slow start for the sector this year may be largely due to seasonal factors. Purchase-mortgage originations in the first three months of 2013 were down by 12.5 percent from the fourth quarter of 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. That was a considerably bigger decline than the 2.1 percent drop in refinance lending, which accounted for a hefty 76.2 percent of total mortgage originations in early 2013. But the estimated $119.0 billion in purchase-mortgage originations during the first quarter was...[Includes three data charts]
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week finalized amendments to its ability-to-repay rule to revise how loan origination compensation is calculated for certain purposes. The agency also provided exemptions and modifications for small creditors, community development lenders and housing stabilization programs. The Dodd-Frank Act generally provides that points and fees on a qualified mortgages may not exceed 3 percent of the loan balance, and that points and fees in excess of 5 percent will trigger the protections for high-cost mortgages under the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act. Dodd-Frank also included a provision requiring that loan originator compensation be counted toward these thresholds, even if it is not paid upfront by the consumer directly to the loan originator. The revised rule excludes...
Legislation introduced last week by a Senate Republican would revoke the charters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and create a new Mortgage Finance Agency for the securitization of single-family and multifamily mortgages. Meanwhile, a separate bipartisan Senate bill still in the works would also dispense with the existing two government-sponsored enterprises while building a new one. Filed on May 23 by Sen. Johnny Isakson, the Mortgage Finance Act of 2013 is patterned on legislation the Georgia Republican proposed in 2011. It would put the GSEs into “irrevocable receivership,” with the Federal Housing Finance Agency tasked as their receiver no later than 18 months after enactment of the bill. “Immediately upon placement of the enterprises into receivership, the FHFA shall commence...
Consumer advocate Ralph Nader doesn’t exactly have a seat at the mortgage reform table, but that isn’t stopping him from asking the Treasury Department to do something to protect what he calls “the already financially injured common shareholders” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In a recent letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Nader blames a host of senior government officials – including Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke – for misleading investors about the financial health of Fannie and Freddie just months before they were seized by the federal government in September 2008. Nader, a one-time shareholder in the government-sponsored enterprises, is pushing...
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