Roughly 14 percent of the 12,500 mortgage complaints the CFPB has received to date from U.S. military personnel, veterans and their dependents involve problems with refinancing, and the issues they face have been changing over time, according to a new report from the bureau. “As the housing market has rebounded, we hear less about veterans struggling to refinance their loans when facing a financial hardship or imminent default and more about the problems associated with refinancing when they are using it as a tool to get potentially more favorable loan terms,” the CFPB document stated. The agency then delved into some of the specific gripes being lodged against mortgage companies. “We receive many complaints from veterans who believe they are ...

The leading Democrats on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the House Financial Services Committee urged Congressional leaders earlier this month to reject any Republican attempts to use so-called must-pass government appropriations legislation to scale back the Dodd-Frank Act and the CFPB. In a letter sent to Senate and House leaders of both parties earlier this month, Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-OH, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, said they will oppose ideological policy riders to year-end funding legislation aimed at rolling back the consumer protections of Dodd-Frank. “Specially, Congress must not include in end-of-year funding legislation any riders designed to repeal, undermine or delay any provisions of Wall Street reform, including those targeted at the CFPB and the ...

Securitization Group Meets with CFPB Officials. Earlier this month, staff and members of the Structured Finance Industry Group met with CFPB Director Richard Cordray and other senior officials to talk about the state of the non-agency mortgage securities market and some of the factors hampering its return.... Mortgage Lenders Meet With Bureau, Other Regulators, to Discuss Diversity, Inclusion. A small group of mortgage lenders recently met with staff of the CFPB, the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to discuss best practices on how to develop and maintain diversity and inclusion programs within the mortgage industry, according to an account by the Mortgage Bankers Association....

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac saw a largely seasonal decline in single-family business in October, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis of mortgage-backed securities data. The two GSEs guaranteed $99.33 billion of single-family MBS during October, an 8.3 percent decline from the previous month. Most of the slippage was in purchase-money mortgages, which fell 14.5 percent from September, following typical seasonal patterns. The refi market held up a lot better. October volume was down 1.6 percent from September, while still ranking as the second-highest monthly total so far this year. That pushed the refi business to 60.2 percent of GSE volume, excluding modified loans.

Commercial banks and savings institutions racked up $5.18 billion in mortgage-banking income during the third quarter of 2016, a huge 44.6 percent increase over the three-month period ending in June, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call report data.

After much speculation, the Federal Housing Finance Agency raised the 2017 conforming loan limit for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac mortgages to $424,100. This is the first time the loan limit climbed above $417,000 in 10 years.

Some of the public comments submitted to the CFPB regarding its TRID 2.0 clarifying rulemaking highlight tensions and rivalries that have emerged between different factions in the homebuying and mortgage-making industry since the original integrated disclosure rule took effect.

Mortgage applications rose 5.5 percent for the week ending Nov. 18, 2016, versus the prior week, according to data from the Mortgage Bankers Association’s Weekly Mortgage Applications Survey. The Refinance Index declined 3 percent from the previous week to its lowest level since January 2016. The seasonally adjusted Purchase Index increased 19 percent from one week earlier. …

Third-party originator channels posted relatively large gains in production volume during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside Mortgage Finance. An estimated $244.0 billion of first-lien mortgages were originated by correspondent sellers and mortgage brokers during the third quarter, up 16.2 percent from the previous period. The bigger gain was in the correspondent channel, where production jumped 16.4 percent during the third quarter, several points higher than the 13.7 percent increase in total first-lien originations. Retail remained...[Includes four data tables]

Home prices on non-distressed properties declined in October for the second straight month, with demand from homebuyers diminishing somewhat as part of a seasonal pattern, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. Non-distressed properties sold last month had an average price of $297,300, based on a three-month moving average. That was down 1.8 percent from September and off 4.1 percent from the average price of $310,000 in August, which was the peak for the year. While prices on non-distressed properties have declined recently, prices in October were...