An Illinois-based mortgage company will pay $1.2 million in restitution to consumers after a state investigation found a company’s branch manager defrauded consumers. Diamond Residential Mortgage Corp., Lake Forest, IL, recently settled with Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, resolving a mortgage fraud allegation. Diamond’s Springfield branch manager, Chris Schaller ...

S&P Global Ratings last week urged mortgage servicers to continue to follow the best practices established after the financial crisis, even as some federal regulators are adopting less assertive regulatory approaches. “While we believe the regulatory landscape has changed and that these actions offer some promising developments for servicers, this overture could still prelude some hurdles,” an S&P report said. “Since servicers have invested considerable capital ...

The CFPB and the Federal Housing Finance Agency last week for the first time released survey results from the National Survey of Mortgage Originations, a loan-level dataset the two agencies administer jointly. The quarterly survey queries borrowers about their experiences getting a mortgage, their perceptions of the mortgage market, and future expectations among others. The data cover closed-end first-lien residential mortgages newly reported to one of the ...

Acting CFPB Director Mick Mulvaney is perceived as someone who’s taking a softer touch on enforcement matters than his predecessor, but nonbank mortgage originators are still being examined at a regular clip, according to industry attorneys As for how many lenders are being examined each year, that’s a different matter. The agency, as a practice, does not disclose those figures. “We’ve had a significant number of nonbank clients get examined by the CFPB ...

United Wholesale Mortgage continues to hire...

One loan broker said business has been so slow that it’s like, “going into a hockey rink overnight: Dead quiet.”

Ellington CEO Laurence Penn: “Becoming a REIT would bring with it big benefits, such as lower effective tax rates..."

Gone from the Senate, via retirement, is Sen. Bob Corker, R-TN, a moderate Republican who was a proponent of reforming the secondary mortgage market…

The dollar volume of low-score purchase loans increased by 29.8 percent from the second to the third quarter, while total GSE purchase business went up 23.6 percent.

More needs to be done to incorporate affordable rental units into all geographic areas, according to Freddie Mac, which released a series of white papers last week focusing on the underserved multifamily housing markets. The GSE is publishing a total of eight papers as part of its duty-to-serve initiative to bring the issue of affordable apartments to the forefront. One of the papers explored how state housing finance agencies help guide low-income housing tax credit investment to high-income ...