Mortgage lenders were making big strides in reducing the number of loan defects related to documentation just as the new integrated disclosure rule took effect, leading to a surge in compliance-related defects. That’s according to a new report based on an analysis of the post-closing quality control data associated with more than 50,000 mortgages that was performed by ACES Risk Management Corp., otherwise known as ARMCO, a provider of web-based audit technology ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are well underway preparing to implement the Uniform Closing Dataset that will become mandatory in the second half of 2017. A big part of the change is moving to an electronic process to support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s closing disclosure.This month, Fannie announced a new collection service that it said offers flexible options for delivering the UCD file in multiple phases of the business process. It includes the ability to verify data and eligibility electronically. Banks can submit either a single file or batch file, get data quality and eligibility feedback messages, and each submission is...

HFSC Continues to Seek Five-Member Commission for FHFA. During a full committee markup this week, the House Financial Services Committee voted to convert regulatory agencies currently headed by single directors, such as the Federal Housing Finance Agency, along with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, into bipartisan, five-member commissions. The HFSC voted to make the Treasury’s one-time GSE privatization study become an annual report/testimony. FHFA Publishes Open Government Plan 2016. The Federal Housing Finance Agency published a document this week highlighting some of the ways it plans to advance the principles of “transparency, participation and collaboration” through open communication and public engagement.

Meanwhile, as home equity originations improve, the outstanding supply of home-equity debt continues to decline.

All three panelists expressed the view that the nonprime market is safe from competition from the megabanks...

The third quarter has yet to end and the big question for the industry boils down to this: Will 3Q be better than 2Q?

Among other things, Fannie found that for 3Q16, more lenders expect to sell their mortgages to the GSEs rather than keeping them in portfolio.

Mortgage originators reported a sharp increase in home-equity lending during the second quarter of 2016, although it wasn’t as robust a gain as the 34.2 percent surge in first-lien originations. Lenders generated an estimated $53.5 billion in home-equity business during the second quarter, an increase of 18.9 percent from the first three months of the year. It was the strongest quarterly production number for the HEL market since the financial crisis. Halfway through 2016, home-equity lending was up 15.9 percent from last year and tracking toward $200 billion in annual production. Although home-equity lending has strengthened over the past few years as house prices have recovered to pre-crisis levels, the outstanding supply of home-equity debt continues...[Includes three data tables]

Retail lending through brick-and-mortar branches and consumer-direct programs was the biggest production channel in conventional mortgage lending but had a somewhat smaller share in government-insured lending, according to an exclusive analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. Retail production played a dominant role in the jumbo market, where it accounted for 79.3 percent of originations over the 18-month period ending in June 2016. Correspondent production played a meaningful role, accounting for 16.1 percent of jumbo originations, but brokers (4.6 percent) had a relatively thin share of the jumbo market. Brokers’ strength was...[Includes one data table]

Some of the nation’s largest originators – including Quicken Loans, United Wholesale Mortgage and Freedom Mortgage – are reporting record originations for August, a boom that’s also resulting in headaches industry-wide: namely appraisal and underwriting delays. At this point, few are describing the delays as a crisis, but with September half over, certain originators fear that longer closing times will eat into profits while angering borrowers. “I have...