The Mortgage Bankers Association is sticking with its proposal to keep Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac alive, but with new charters, while inviting other players to compete with the two giants in the securitization of conventional mortgages. The trade group this week proposed a utility-like model for the re-christened government-sponsored enterprises. They would inherit the personnel and systems the GSEs now have, but become limited-purpose, publicly owned securitization businesses under tight government regulation. Other entities could apply...

Freddie Mac introduced a curriculum to help potential manufactured homebuyers in Kentucky get a mortgage and is now looking to increase lender participation in the program. The GSE partnered with Next Step Network, a housing intermediary based in Louisville, and three nonprofit housing counseling agencies to create the online education curriculum aimed at better preparing Kentucky homebuyers with blemished credit histories. Since the initiative was rolled out...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency said it increased the number of minority and women-owned businesses it awarded contracts to in 2016. But several obstacles make expanding its business with MWOBs complicated. The agency recently released its annual report to Congress, which details initiatives and accomplishments during the year to increase diversity and inclusion. This year’s report also mentioned a diversity and inclusion program to examine the same practices within Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks. In 2016, the FHFA expanded...

The Structured Finance Industry Group is worried that the Credit Competition Score Act of 2017 could result in an excessive number of approaches to credit scoring. Rep. Ed Royce, R-CA, introduced H.R. 898 in February with Reps. Kyrsten Sinema, D-AZ, and Terri Sewell, D-AL. The bill lets...

Most of the discussion about lender relief from the compliance burdens under the Dodd-Frank Act has revolved around the Financial CHOICE Act sponsored by House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX. But the wheels are starting to move in the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, where Chairman Mike Crapo, R-ID, has begun receiving input from industry trade groups about the kind of changes they would like to see. The lion’s share of the industry’s concerns have to do with the mortgage rules promulgated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, whether it’s the integrated disclosure rule, the ability-to-repay rule or the penchant the bureau seems to have for bypassing the public rulemaking process through the use of consent orders. The Mortgage Bankers Association urged...

Industry experts are concerned that significantly raising the standard federal income-tax deduction could make the mortgage-interest deduction less valuable and hurt the housing market. The Republican “blueprint” for a massive overhaul of federal income taxes proposes boosting the standard deduction from $12,600 to $24,000 for joint filers. This could mean fewer taxpayers would itemize their deductions and claim the MID. The Community Home Lenders Association opposes...

Private capital needs to return to the mortgage market to make the market less dependent on taxpayers, according to JPMorgan Chase. The company dedicated portions of its latest annual report to call for a number of changes that could increase non-agency lending. According to Chase, a “healthy” non-agency mortgage-backed security market hasn’t resumed eight years after the financial crisis because housing finance reform and other securitization standards ...

Congress should make a number of changes to the ability-to-repay rule that would encourage more non-agency lending, according to the Consumer Mortgage Coalition. The CMC represents lenders, servicers and service providers. “The liability for mortgage lending is now so severe that private capital has left the mortgage market and has stayed away,” Anne Canfield, executive director of the CMC, said in testimony last week submitted to a subcommittee of the ...

During a conference call last week with members of the news media, Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank, the one-time chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, defended the CFPB and criticized congressional Republicans for their attack on the agency, accusing them of hypocrisy on multiple fronts. “I thought Republicans were concerned about excessive power in the executive branch, that they want to defend their congressional prerogative,” said Frank. But during the debate on the Dodd-Frank Act, Congress decided quite consciously that we would have an independent, single director, independent in the sense that the president could not fire that person at will,” he noted. “That was a congressional restriction on presidential appointment power, no question about it.” But now, apparently their ...

More changes, or at least additional guidance, may be in the offing for the pending Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that is scheduled to take effect next year, agency Director Richard Cordray said last week during an appearance on Capitol Hill. During a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-CA, pointed out, “Studies have shown that in some geographic areas, it is possible to determine the identity of nearly 100 percent of the borrowers using the data that lenders are required to collect and report by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. This is despite the fact that that act supposedly provides for anonymous data in its final form.” Sherman also ...