Home prices in the U.S. are continuing to rebound – in some cases, nearing their peak before the housing market’s collapse, and in other cases, exceeding their peak. The trending data are stoking anxiety among some market observers that the American housing and mortgage markets are either already in, or dangerously close to, bubble territory. For example, the latest Home Price Index from Black Knight Financial Services now stands at an average of $256,000, up 32.6 percent from the market’s bottom and just 1.1 percent away from a new national peak, based on June 2016 residential real estate transactions. That figure is up 5.3 percent from year-ago levels. Further, home prices in six of the nation’s 20 largest states in mortgage activity reached...
Industry observers are weighing in on the redesigned Uniform Residential Loan Application, an industry standard that has largely remained the same for the past 20 years, until now. The GSEs published the new form last week to give lenders ample time to get familiar with it. The updated form won’t officially be in use until Jan. 1, 2018. The URLA is for single-family loans submitted to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mae, as well as mortgages insured by the FHA, VA or U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Services. The redesigned form falls under the larger Federal Housing Finance Agency and GSE initiative to standardize single-family mortgage data in the U.S.
Proponents of the mortgage interest tax deduction point out that the real estate and mortgage industries employ thousands upon thousands of workers with spillover to other sectors...
One former GSE executive lost his severance package case and another settled in a long-standing civil fraud lawsuit. Both cases came to a conclusion last week. Anthony Piszel, former chief financial officer at Freddie Mac, appealed a judgment from the U.S. Court of Federal Claims dismissing his complaint that Freddie owed him payment for his “golden parachute” compensation after he was terminated without cause at the start of the conservatorship. The question came down to whether or not a government prohibition on making golden parachute payments to terminated Freddie employees was illegal or not. Piszel was terminated two weeks after...
FHFA’s TCPA Exemption Request Denied. The Federal Communications Commission turned down the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s request to exempt GSE mortgage servicing calls from prohibitions against robocalls, or automated dialing and calling systems, to contact delinquent borrowers. It refused the request, citing the exemption for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans “because little in the way of facts has been entered into the record.” According to the commission, the FHFA, in its request, cites two different exemption provisions. However, the FCC said the FHFA failed to provide the information necessary for determining whether the calls at issue would satisfy the threshold requirements for exemption. Under the rule, calls to cell phones are capped at no more than three attempts...
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