The treatment of balloon loans under new federal rules is one example where regulation is taking a broad brush approach that disadvantages community banks.

Former GSE regulator James Lockhart noted that only one “catastrophic” guarantor is needed, though he stressed that “you need more than one issuer.”

Residual income is the amount of money left after deducting a borrower’s housing and installment debt from gross monthly income.

PennyMac Financial must be rolling in the dough: the firm is handing out huge stock awards to its top officers.

Only a crazy person would speculate in GSE junior preferred stock. Meanwhile, Dr. Frankenstein reveals himself.

The Supreme Court of the United States announced Monday, June 17, that it decided to grant the petition for certiorari in the disparate impact case of Township of Mount Holly v. Mt. Holly Gardens Citizens in Action, Inc. Specifically, Mt. Holly challenges the position of the Department of Housing and Urban Development that disparate impact can be used to establish liability under the Fair Housing Act, even if there is no discriminatory intent. The CFPB, HUD and the Department of Justice have all previously gone on record as...

Bruce Schultz, head of mortgage operations for SpiritBank, offered attendees at the American Bankers Association’s regulatory compliance conference a useful acronym to remember a good strategy for navigating the rocks and shoals of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rulemaking: CADI: Coordinate, Analyze, Decide, Implement. “First up is coordination,” Schultz told participants in a break-out session at the conference, held last week in Chicago. “Various people that you’re going to need to have input...

The American Bankers Association asked the CFPB for more detailed guidance on the “temporary qualified mortgage” for government-sponsored enterprise and agency mortgage loans. Earlier this year, the bureau proposed some amendments to its mortgage rules under the Real Estate Settlement and Procedures Act and the Truth in Lending Act. Among them are some proposed revised commentaries regarding the standards that a creditor must meet when relying upon a written guide or the automated underwriting system of one of the GSEs, the...

The CFPB recently put out two more small entity compliance guides, one for its loan originator rule and the other for its mortgage servicing rules that were finalized in January and kick in Jan. 10, 2014. The loan originator rule generally regulates how compensation is paid to a loan originator in most closed-end mortgage transactions. That includes prohibiting a loan originator’s compensation from being based on the terms of the transaction or a proxy for a transaction term. The LO rule also prohibits loan...

Eight lender industry trade groups have called upon the CFPB and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to provide written guidance that clearly spells out that complying with the bureau’s ability‐to repay/qualified mortgage rulemaking will not make lenders vulnerable to disparate impact liability under the Fair Housing Act or the Equal Credit Opportunity Act. In February of this year, HUD came out with its disparate impact rule under which liability for such claims can be established as per the Fair Housing Act. Back in...