The Federal Communications Commission last week denied a request from the Mortgage Bankers Association to exempt calls from mortgage servicers to borrowers from provisions of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Officials at the MBA said the denial was unexpected. Among other issues, the petition had received some support from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The TCPA and FCC rules prohibit...

President-elect Donald Trump’s business background could help address two of the biggest challenges confronting the housing finance industry today: limited credit availability and a shortage in the supply of the housing stock, according to Laurie Goodman, director of the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. “Mortgage credit availability is an issue we have repeatedly written about,” said Goodman in a recent online blog post. Some of her previous research has shown that “the market is taking less than half the credit risk it was taking during 2001, a period of reasonable credit standards,” she noted. And other HFPC research has shown...

The baseline conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will climb to $424,100 in 2017, the first such increase since 2006. The 1.7 percent increase reflected a gain in the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s expanded-data house price index at the end of the third quarter. The new ceiling for high-cost markets will...

American International Group is working to “rebalance its exposure to residential mortgages” after the company’s sale of United Guaranty, a private mortgage insurer. Douglas Dachille, an executive vice president and CIO at AIG, detailed a number of plans late last week in a presentation to investors. He said the insurance giant is structuring direct investments in residential and commercial mortgages and other whole loans. “The team is...

A U.S. district court judge in New York has certified a class of investors to move forward with mortgage-related fraud claims they have brought against three large banks. MBS investors led by plaintiff New Jersey Carpenters Health Fund sued units of Wells Fargo that were acquired from Wachovia Capital Markets, Royal Bank of Scotland and Deutsche Bank that helped underwrite $7.7 billion of MBS issued by failed subprime lender NovaStar Mortgage. The plaintiffs accused...

Fairholme Funds officials this week continued to press their case for restoring shareholder rights for private investors in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, expressing hope that the incoming Trump administration will be friendlier to their cause. In Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al, the plaintiffs argue that the net worth sweep imposed by the Treasury Department and Federal Housing Finance Agency was illegal and that the two government-sponsored enterprises were not in a “death spiral” at the time of the bailout as the government claims. During a conference call this week, Fairholme CEO Bruce Berkowitz said...

Commercial banks and savings institutions recently wrapped up their best quarter in over a year in terms of mortgage-banking income, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. The industry racked up $5.18 billion in mortgage-banking income during the third quarter, a huge 44.6 percent increase over the three-month period ending in June. It was the best quarter in mortgage-banking income since the April-June cycle in 2015, when ... [Includes one data chart]

Just over one fifth – 21 percent – of homebuyers this year regret their choice of mortgage lender, according to a new survey by J.D. Power. For first-time homebuyers, that number jumps to 27 percent. “Overall satisfaction scores have increased year over year, but a high percentage of home buyers are remorseful about their mortgage lender selection,” J.D. Power said. Of those homebuyers who regret their decision, the firm found two distinct scenarios have unfolded ...

When deciding which lender to work for, high-performing loan originators put an emphasis on companies that have the infrastructure to help originate mortgages, according to a survey of LOs by Floify. The company, which provides a communication portal for lenders, borrowers and others involved in the origination process, recently surveyed LOs on recruitment and retention issues. The findings focused on LOs with at least $21.0 million in annual origination volume ...

A recent white paper from VantageScore Solutions claiming that millions of potential mortgage borrowers have been restricted from receiving loans due to “conventional” credit scoring models has prompted a strong response from officials at Fair Isaac. Joanne Gaskin, a senior director in Fair Isaac’s scores and analytics group, published a “truth squad” post on a FICO-related website addressing VantageScore’s claims. “Scoring sparse and old data may give more ...