The controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans to hit the ground running when it officially opens its doors for business July 21, whether or not the agency has a director in place. Steve Antonakes, assistant director for large bank supervision at the CFPB, told industry executives last week that the agency is ready to begin conducting “point-in-time” examinations of banks with more than $10 billion in assets, exams that will last anywhere from four to 12 weeks, based on the size and complexity of the institution. A clean exam means...

The volume of home-equity loans outstanding dropped to its lowest level since 2005 and new production continued to slow in early 2011, but there are some signs that the HEL market may be touching bottom. The Federal Reserve reported that $925.3 billion of home-equity lines of credit and closed-end second mortgages were outstanding as of the end of March, down 2.6 percent from the fourth quarter. That was the lowest outstanding balance of home-equity loans since the fourth quarter of 2005. New HEL originations fell...[Includes two data charts]

A broad coalition of industry trade groups, consumer advocates and community groups urged federal regulators to open the door to qualified residential mortgage status for loans with low downpayments, but offered only the mildest support for private mortgage insurance. The Coalition for Sensible Housing Policy reiterated criticism of the QRM standard drafted by federal regulators as part of the securitization risk-retention proposed rule earlier this year that has been made...

In an apparent victory for the mortgage industry, the Senate has set aside amendments to an economic development bill that would have established national standards for mortgage servicers and changed the way the FHA collects interest payments on prepaid FHA-insured mortgage loans. The Mortgage Bankers Association and the American Bankers Association warned legislators that adoption of the amendments would be...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s failure to recognize and quickly provide law enforcement authorities with information about allegations of fraud and other potential criminal conduct presents a “significant risk” for the agency and the government-sponsored enterprises it regulates, concluded the FHFA’s watchdog. The Office of the Inspector General of the FHFA this week issued...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Office of the Inspector General continued to find weaknesses during a second audit of FHA’s Title II single-family lender renewal process despite steps already taken by the agency to strengthen its controls. In a new report released last week, HUD’s internal watchdog recommended additional improvements, some of which were rejected...

Nearly a year after the Dodd-Frank Act authorized $1 billion in funding, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the start of the Emergency Homeowners’ Loan Program this week, offering mortgage aid to unemployed homeowners in 28 U.S. states and Puerto Rico. The EHLP is to aid homeowners who, due to a reduction in income, are unemployed or underemployed and at risk of foreclosure. The program is administered...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may have been more intensively involved in the 50-state servicer settlement discussions than it has publicly let on, and has tried to keep at least some of its contact with the state attorneys general secret, emails from several state agencies seem to suggest...

Federal banking regulators have the unenviable task of harmonizing two mortgage disclosure documents – one under the Truth in Lending Act and one under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act – for consumers who generally won’t read them and don’t fully understand them when they do. And mortgage lenders have the same kinds of stubborn obstacles to overcome if they’re going to be able to more effectively design and successfully market products consumers will respond…

The Treasury Department announced that, beginning this month, it is withholding financial incentives for three top mortgage servicers, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo Bank, because their performance in the Obama administration’s Making Home Affordable Program was considered inadequate...