Critics of the CFPB and industry opponents of its new ability-to-repay/“qualified mortgage” rulemaking quickly got excited when the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruled recently in Noel Canning v. National Labor Relations Board that President Obama’s recess appointments of three officials to the NLRB were unconstitutional. Their hope was that the president’s appointment of Richard Cordray as director of the CFPB might similarly be invalidated. And perhaps more to the point, they hoped the...
Federal regulators should consider aligning the pending risk retention rule’s “qualified residential mortgage” standard with the “qualified mortgage” standard under the ability‐to‐repay rule the CFPB finalized on Jan. 10, Federal Reserve Governor Daniel Tarullo said. Defining QRMs as QMs would eliminate the downpayment requirement initially proposed for QRMs and allow greater access to credit for borrowers than a more stringent QRM definition, he said at a Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on...
Redwood Trust plans to more than triple the dollar amount of non-agency jumbo mortgage-backed securities it issues this year compared with its issuance from 2012, according to comments this week from officials at the real estate investment trust. Redwood also plans to securitize conforming jumbos and even aggregate conforming loans to sell to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The REIT’s goal for 2013 is to issue about $7.0 billion in non-agency MBS. While potential competitors struggled to ...
The ability-to-repay rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will not have a negative impact on First Republic Bank’s originations of interest-only mortgages, according to James Herbert, chairman and CEO of the bank. Officials at Redwood Trust also said the rule is unlikely to impact its acquisition and securitization of IOs. If anything, First Republic’s Herbert said the new rule from the CFPB, which included harsher treatment for IO originations beginning in 2014, could help increase ...
House Republicans may be able to pass tough FHA reform and solvency legislation out of committee but they may not have enough votes on the House floor or in the Senate to sustain such a bill, according to industry sources. Even after two successive hearings in the House Financial Services Committee this month, there has been no clear indication from Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, as to which proposals might go into a legislative package of FHA reforms. Hensarling is said to be operating “with a very strong hand,” and if it were up to him entirely, he would draft legislation that would contain some ...
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