Freddie expects to make a $2 billion dividend payment to Treasury – the holder of its senior preferred stock – sometime in September.

The biggest surge was in non-agency securitization of mortgages on hotels and other lodging properties, which jumped 88.7 percent from the first quarter.

The noted research firm found that mortgage customers feel as if their servicers are more focused on profit than giving top-notch customer support...

Freddie Mac CEO Don Layton: "The fundamentals are strong and residual flaws are gone..."

“Some lenders are finally showing more willingness to extend credit to borrowers..." said FHFA Director Mel Watt.

As the CFPB prepares to do the Dodd-Frank Act required assessment of its 2013 mortgage servicing rule under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, one industry trade group has urged the bureau to provide servicers with more regulatory guidance and clarifications of the current rule. The Consumer Mortgage Coalition said in a letter to the regulator that it has appreciated the opportunity to work with the bureau as it developed the final servicing requirements. “However, as the CFPB is aware, the final regulatory requirements are very prescriptive, yet unclear, and sometimes conflict with other statutory or regulatory requirements,” said the CMC. “In some areas of the regulation, the CFPB misunderstood the reason for the problems it was trying to solve ...

The CFPB plans to make some significant, but unspecified, changes to its mortgage servicing rule sometime this fall, in response to concerns raised by the industry, the bureau revealed in a blog posting about its latest semiannual rulemaking agenda, released earlier this month. The document is current as of April 1, 2017, and does not reflect the bureau’s issuance of its arbitration final rule, its assessments of its mortgage servicing rule under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and its ability-to-repay rule, nor its proposed temporary increase in the institutional and transactional thresholds for home equity lines of credit. The agency said it is “considering concerns raised by industry participants regarding a few substantive aspects of the mortgage servicing rule ...

If lawmakers and regulators are interested in bringing capital back to the private mortgage market and facilitating borrower access to credit in a responsible manner, they must make much-needed reforms to a handful of key mortgage rules promulgated by the CFPB, according to bond giant Pacific Investment Management Co. One recommended revision is eliminating the expansion of assignee liability for investors under the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule. “Currently under the Dodd-Frank Act, mortgage investors are liable for mistakes made by lenders in the mortgage origination process for certain mortgage loans that are not deemed qualified mortgages,” said PIMCO. “Since investors have no role or discretion in the mortgage origination process, we believe this is not only nonsensical, but also has the ...

A handful of top industry trade groups again wrote to CFPB Director Richard Cordray urging him to delay implementation of the bureau’s new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rules. “Although we greatly appreciate the CFPB’s work to facilitate implementation of this major data collection and reporting rule, the CFPB’s regulatory process and technological framework for this rule are still incomplete,” said the organizations. For one thing, proposed amendments to the rule are not yet finalized. “Moreover, the HMDA data reporting portals, geocoding tools, data validation, and rule edits are not yet issued,” the groups added. “All of these items are needed to ensure compliant business process and systems changes by the effective date.” Additionally, the CFPB has not yet initiated a ...

Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, and other Democrat members of the House Financial Services Committee recently released a detailed report in defense of the CFPB and its accomplishments in protecting consumers in the wake of the mortgage market collapse and the financial crisis that led to the Great Recession. “The consumer bureau has worked tirelessly to comply with its statutory mandate to ensure consumers are treated fairly, and that financial institutions are held accountable for predatory and other unscrupulous conduct,” the report said. According to the minority report, the CFPB has produced strong results, such as returning almost $12 billion to 29 million harmed consumers; implementing rules ensuring consumers have access to a fair and competitive marketplace; and requiring clear disclosures ...