The Alt A origination estimate is based on the volume of first-lien conventional mortgages with interest rates ranging from 150 basis points over the prime mortgage rate to 300 bps over.

The GSEs are beginning to take in a significant amount of money from R&W settlements, but both stand to reap an even larger windfall from a pending civil lawsuit filed by the FHFA against 17 issuers of private label MBS.

Meanwhile, the regulator Monday morning unveiled new “master policy” requirements for the MI industry, which will make it harder for insurance firms to get out paying claims on defaulted mortgages.

Standard & Poor’s recently published an updated estimate of likely losses stemming from mortgage-related litigation, finding that banks face future costs of $56.5 billion to $104 billion.

The CFPB has gone ahead and issued the last big piece to the mortgage finance puzzle it was mandated to manufacture by the Dodd-Frank Act, the integrated mortgage-disclosure rule under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act and related forms. The good news for the mortgage finance industry – apart from the 20-month implementation period – is that the new rule and forms, part of the bureau’s “know before you owe” initiative, are not nearly as “transformational” towards the fundamental nature of the...

The scope of the ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage final rule released earlier this year by the CFPB will make it more difficult for borrowers to obtain loans and tighten already-strict underwriting standards, according to analysts at Standard & Poor’s Ratings Services. “We anticipate that the rule will prevent many of the types of loosely underwritten mortgages that caused systemic risk during the 2006 and 2007 origination period, but may do so at the expense of limiting credit access – sometimes to qualified borrowers,” they...

Bureau Faults Financial Services Providers Over Educational Expenditures. A new study from the CFPB claims that the financial services industry spends 25 times as much money annually on marketing financial products and services to consumers each year than on financial education – $17 billion versus $670 million, respectively. According to the bureau’s modeling methodology, that shakes out to about $54 on marketing versus $2 on financial education per person per year. Richard Hunt, president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development expects to issue the long-anticipated FHA FY 2013 independent review of the state of the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund on or before the middle of December. The report’s release was delayed due to the three-week government shutdown in October.

A closer look at the new integrated mortgage-disclosure rule issued last week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau reveals a handful of important changes made to the rule itself, while the forms have undergone only modest revisions. The first important change to the final rule is a mandatory three-business-day waiting period between the time the lender provides the closing disclosure and the closing itself. “By providing the closing disclosure three days before closing, consumers can review their final loan terms and costs in an unpressured environment rather than at the closing table,” the bureau said. “This allows consumers time to confirm they are getting what they expected.” It also will give...

Two crucial legal events occurred in 2013 that might have signaled the extinction of the narrow window through which deficiency judgments were possible on residential property in California. Attorneys at Nossaman LLP said the recent passage of California Senate Bill 426 and the conforming decision by the California Court of Appeal, Fourth Appellate District, have made clear that the state’s anti-deficiency statutes not only protect home loan borrowers from judgments or collections but also trump any separate lender/borrower agreement regarding the payment of any deficiency following a foreclosure or a short sale. A deficiency judgment is...