Harbour Portfolio Advisors of Dallas, one of the largest providers of seller-financed homes in the U.S., must comply with a civil investigative demand from the CFPB for documents and other information, according to a recent ruling by Judge Nancy Edmunds of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, in Detroit. The main issue here, according to the respondents in the case, is whether the bureau’s investigative authority extends to their selling, marketing and servicing of a financial product called an agreement for deed (AFD), otherwise known as a “contract for deed” or a “land installment contract.” An AFD is a written agreement to purchase residential property, whereby the seller agrees to deliver a deed to the purchaser ...
If federal policymakers do away with the CFPB’s mortgage rules without proper replacements, the credit quality of residential mortgage-backed securities could be compromised, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service said in a recent report. The analysts were providing a review of President Trump’s recent executive order related to the Dodd-Frank Act. “Any significant repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act’s mortgage-related provisions without effective alternatives would weaken residential RMBS credit quality because these provisions have strengthened the credit quality of mortgage originations, improved servicing practices and bolstered the credit integrity of RMBS structures,” the analysts said. The report is significant because it flies in the face of the traditional industry narrative that the bureau’s mortgage rules have been nothing but an onerous burden ...
Two years after first proposing a regulation addressing mortgage servicing rights transfers, the Maryland Commissioner of Financial Regulation recently issued a revised iteration that could have a big effect on the mortgage servicing industry, according to attorneys with the Ballard Spahr law firm. According to a summary by the attorneys of the technical language of the proposed regulation, for any transfer of MSR involving at least 7,500 loans, the transferee servicer would have to report certain information to the commissioner at least 30 days before date of the transfer. Specifically, the transferee servicer would have to “report whether the transfer involves a subservicing agreement or an agreement for the sale of mortgage servicing rights; the names of the parties to ...
Distress in the housing market has an impact on the location and types of jobs individuals are willing to take, according to research by the National Bureau of Economic Research. During the most recent recession, distressed borrowers tended to apply for fewer jobs that required relocation and looked for lower-level positions, according to an NBER working paper by Jennifer Brown of the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia and David Matsa of ...
“Since reaching a trough in mid-2013, the rebound in household debt has been led by student debt and auto debt, with only sluggish growth in mortgage debt,” said one New York Fed official.
A Minnesota state court has rendered a judgment that could substantially limit the amount of damages Residential Funding Co. and its successor-in-interest, the ResCap Liquidating Trust, could recover if it were ever to prevail on its claims in any given lawsuit against correspondent lenders, according to industry attorneys. On Feb. 1, the District Court of Hennepin County held that RFC and ResCap would not be able to pursue loan-by-loan damages associated with a repurchase claim and, thus, could not use a repurchase price “formula” to establish damages, said Philip Stein, a partner with Bilzin Sumberg Baena Price & Axelrod, in an analysis. The decision favored...