MetLife, Inc. has announced that it is leaving the reverse mortgage business as part of a broader business plan to exit the mortgage market and focus strategically on global insurance and employee benefits. Nationstar Mortgage will purchase MetLife’s reverse mortgage servicing portfolio. MetLife Bank will no longer accept new reverse mortgage loan applications and registrations. MetLife’s entire retail banking business, including mortgages, accounted for less than 2.0 percent of the company’s 2011 operating earnings. Last year, the company decided to ...

Credit unions continue to nibble at the edges of a mortgage business dominated by large banks and finely tuned mortgage banking operations, but credit unions’ share of the market climbed to a record 7.36 percent in 2011, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. While most of the industry has fled to the highest ground in underwriting standards, credit unions have been more flexible lenders willing to hold mortgages on their balance sheets and originate loans that don’t conform to the secondary market. “Credit unions sell about 45 percent of...(Includes two data charts)

Mortgage lenders closed a record $28.31 billion in mortgages with Veterans Administration home loan guaranties during the first quarter of 2012, breaking the previous all-time high set in the fourth quarter of last year. VA lending has been going gangbusters over the past few years as FHA’s market share has gradually declined. In 2011, the VA program provided more new primary mortgage insurance coverage than the private MI industry for the first time ever since the birth of the private MI business. In 2011, the VA accounted for 22.0 percent of the primary MI market, and 26.0 percent in the...(Includes one data chart)

With all the concern thatfs been raised about loan originator compensation since the mortgage marketfs collapse in 2008, and given a certain amount of gget-toughh rhetoric from leadership at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the agency seemed to take a quick-and-dirty approach when issuing its first pronouncement in topic earlier this month. Back in September 2010, the Federal Reserve put out loan originator compensation rules under the Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z, effective as of April 6, 2011. Then with enactment of the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010...

The U.S. Attorney General’s recently released 2011 annual report to Congress on the Equal Credit Opportunity Act Amendments of 1976 provides some useful insight as to what prompts it to litigate referrals from other agencies, as opposed to bumping them back for administrative resolution. Referrals that are most likely to be returned generally share a few characteristics, such as whether the practice at issue had ceased and there is little chance that it will be repeated. Another characteristic is whether the violation may have been accidental or stemmed from ignorance of the...

An unusual coalition of dozens of lender, realtor, consumer and civil rights groups late last week urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to write a broadly defined “qualified mortgage” as part of the ability-to-repay final rule it’s putting together as per the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The CFPB is expected to issue a proposed rule defining a QM shortly. As per the ability-to-repay standards of Dodd-Frank Section 1412, a qualified mortgage cannot have points and fees in excess of 3 percent of the loan amount. The groups are worried...

Four mortgage- and financial services-related trade groups told the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau they’re unhappy the CFPB hasn’t adopted more of the suggestions they’ve made over the numerous iterations the bureau has put out of its Know Before You Owe consolidated consumer disclosure project. The CFPB is currently on the ninth version of its evolving disclosures model. “During the Know Before You Owe iterations, we have submitted a large number of comment letters that walk the CFPB through a large number of very technical, but important details,” the groups said...

First Republic Bank – the primary source of loans for Redwood Trust non-agency mortgage-backed securities – has received high marks for its jumbo originations. FRB’s originations are concentrated around San Francisco, largely for wealthy borrowers. After relying on CitiMortgage for all of the loans in its first post-bust non-agency MBS issuance, Redwood has relied heavily on FRB. The lender accounted for a slight majority of the four securities totaling $1.41 billion Redwood has issued in 2011 and at the beginning of 2012 ...

Shortly after being acquired by Capital One Financial, jumbo lender ING Direct announced last week that it will exit the wholesale business. However, Capital One stressed that the lender will continue to offer jumbos on a retail basis. ING Bank was the sixth-ranked non-agency jumbo lender in 2011, according to Inside Nonconforming Markets, with an estimated $5.04 billion in such originations. That was down 26.9 percent from the previous year. A spokesman for Capital One said exiting wholesale lending will allow Capital One to ...

Subprime lending standards appear to be loosening across numerous asset classes, including home loans, but it is still difficult for borrowers to get a subprime mortgage. Equifax recently reported that subprime originations have grown as of the end of 2011 compared with the end of 2010. The company’s National Consumer Credit Trends Report was produced with Moody’s Analytics, and included details on credit cards, auto finance, consumer finance, retail credit and student loans. “The evidence of increased lending to subprime consumers demonstrates banks’ ongoing efforts to ...