Mortgage programs that use less than 24 months of bank statements to verify a borrower’s ability to repay back a loan are riskier than more traditional mortgages and may be prone to running afoul of the CFPB’s ATR rule, according to a new report from Moody’s Investors Service. “Although longer-term bank statement programs would likely satisfy the CFPB’s ATR rule, short-term programs may not,” analysts at Moody’s said. “To fully understand cashflow patterns typical of the borrower’s line of work, the longer the track record, the better,” they added. “The fewer statements a program requires, the higher the likelihood for inconsistencies in the calculation of available income from loan-to-loan.” Under the ATR rule, as Moody’s noted, the originator is required ...

CFPB Issues Small Entity Compliance Guide for Its Mortgage Servicing Final Rule. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has published an updated version of its Small Entity Compliance Guide for its 2016 mortgage servicing final rule, incorporating amendments made to mortgage servicing provisions in Regulation X and Regulation Z. ... Bureau, Other Regulators, Hold Exemption Threshold for Appraisals for Higher-Priced Mortgage Loans Steady. The CFPB, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency decided to maintain at $25,500 the exemption threshold for appraisals for higher-priced mortgage loans under the Truth in Lending Act (Regulation Z). ...

The Federal Reserve continues to be the largest investor in the MBS market, though it has long since stopped growing its portfolio…

If Cato's Mark Calabria becomes FHA chief, private MI firms could benefit…

ResCap Liquidating Trust last week filed two new lawsuits against lenders as it continued its efforts to recover losses due to bad loans purchased from correspondents that later forced the company into Chapter 11 bankruptcy. No other details were provided by defendant attorneys with American Mortgage Law Group, which warned that the Dec. 2 filings in Minnesota federal district court may trigger a second wave of litigation by the trust. AMLG said it has been helping a number of lenders with pre-litigation demands from the trust and has seen increased activity on that front. On Nov. 16, a federal judge dismissed...

“That’s a lot of work for an industry that apparently doesn’t exist,” said Richard Johns, SFIG’s executive director.

Late this week, Nationstar’s common was selling for $19.17 a share, just pennies below its yearly high. PennyMac Financial topped its high for the year.

In case you’re not keeping tally, there are roughly 387 calendar days remaining before the “capital buffer” at Fannie and Freddie falls to zero on Jan. 1, 2018.

Defects in mortgage loans produced under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s integrated disclosure rule fell modestly in the second quarter of 2016, after peaking in the first three months of the year. This is the first such drop since the TRID rule took effect in October 2015, according to a new quality control analysis from ARMCO, a risk management technology vendor. “TRID-related defects continue to be the leading area of concern in post-closing reviews; however ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac had markedly different experiences in November in terms of new single-family business activity. Issuance of Fannie mortgage-backed securities fell 25.9 percent from October to November, while Freddie production soared 13.6 percent higher, according to a new Inside The GSEs analysis and ranking. The most likely explanation for the divergence is that Freddie had more business days in which November MBS were issued. Both GSEs observed two legal holidays – Veterans Day and Thanksgiving – which knocked the number of business days down to 20 last month. But Fannie also took off the day after Thanksgiving in terms of new MBS issuance, while Freddie kept the machinery running. And although mortgage sellers set up new...