As a group, the largest bank mortgage lenders began reporting sagging mortgage originations in the fourth quarter, though the drop was hardly a disaster.
Guild Mortgage, which ranks 21st among all home lenders, has agreed to purchase Cornerstone Mortgage, St. Louis, marking the first acquisition of 2018, a year in which the rollup of smaller lending shops could be significant.
The recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was pitched as a simplification of the tax code. And while the bill could ultimately reduce some tax-related complexities, lenders are facing sweeping changes this year.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been charged with exploring options to update their current FICO credit scoring model and make a decision this year as to whether to make the switch in 2019.
The House Financial Services Committee this week was advancing more than a dozen and a half regulatory relief measures as Inside Mortgage Finance was going to press, including some mortgage-related legislation that would expand the qualified-mortgage box for smaller entities and exempt many institutions from the rules and regulations issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
The game-changing ability-to-repay mortgage lending rule from the Consumer Financial Protec-tion Bureau took effect four years ago this month. At that time, regulators said there would be plenty of mortgage lending outside the parameters of the qualified-mortgage box. So far, however, that ex-pectation has yet to be realized.
Bipartisan legislation was introduced last week in the U.S. Senate to protect veterans and service members from predatory serial refinancing by requiring lenders to show the transaction actually bene-fits the borrower.
The Federal Reserve Board last week wrapped up enforcement actions against 10 banks and im-posed fines against five of them after “sustainable improvements” in their servicing operations.
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