In partnership with former Lehman Brothers Managing Director Brian Libman, Blackstone is trying to carry out a “roll-up” strategy...

The FHA loans were originated through the bank’s mortgage subsidiary, First Horizon Home Loans, which was sold to MetLife Bank in August 2008.

Chase was the second-ranked jumbo lender in the first quarter of 2015, nearly closing the wide gap that Wells Fargo has maintained in recent years.

The higher loan limit for the jumbo program will go into effect early in the third quarter.

But the product does not come cheap. On an A- credit loan, the rate is set at 8.25 percent when CLTV is 60 percent.

By signing the addendum, the borrower certifies that he or she will make payments on the mortgage or become indebted to the federal government...

Although Provident entered into a consent order, it said in a follow-up statement that it has no knowledge that brokers “were allegedly overcharging certain borrowers.”

Provident Funding, one of the largest wholesale mortgage lenders in the nation, has agreed to pay $9 million in damages for funding loans with higher broker fees on mortgages made to African Americans and Hispanics over a five-year period ending in 2011. According to a statement and notice of charges put out late last week by the CFPB, the privately held lender charged roughly 14,000 minorities higher “total broker fees” than white borrowers. The $9 million will feed a settlement fund that will pay minorities harmed by the practice. “The higher fees were not based on the borrowers’ creditworthiness or other objective criteria related to borrower risk or loan characteristics, but on their race or national origin,” the CFPB said...

More than 250 members of the House of Representatives have signed onto a letter to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Director Richard Cordray, urging he institute a “grace period” of enforcement with the bureau’s pending integrated disclosure rule that takes effect Aug. 1, 2015. The lawmakers have joined the mortgage lending industry in calling for an ease on tight enforcement of the TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule from the Aug. 1 effective date through the end of the year. “[T]his complicated and extensive rule is likely to cause challenges during implementation, which is currently scheduled for Aug. 1, 2015, that could negatively impact consumers,” said the lawmakers. “As you know, the housing market is highly seasonal, with August, September and October ...

Yet another industry concern about the CFPB’s pending TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule has emerged. Technology vendor eLynx, based in Cincinnati, has determined that many lenders will be relying at least in part on manually entered data to create the CFPB-mandated Closing Disclosure (CD) after the Aug. 1, 2015, implementation of the new rule. According to the vendor, lenders are concerned that manual data re-entry will be a major cause of disclosure mistakes when the agency’s TRID rule takes effect. eLynx conducted a survey of the hundreds of lenders and settlement professionals currently using its services. “The results are alarming,” the company said. “Only 6 percent have a fully automated process for collecting property-related data from settlement service providers (SSPs).” ...