Quicken Loan’s lawsuit against the government could help provide some certainty to lenders as to the proper legal standard for evaluating compliance with FHA rules and whether loan sampling is a permissible post-endorsement review strategy, according to legal experts. The adjudication of Quicken’s case against the Department of Justice in a public forum should clarify FHA policies, procedures, and the degree of future liability risks, experts said. Quicken Loans, the top FHA lender in 2014, sued the Department of Justice in federal court in Detroit April 17, accusing it of high-pressure tactics to admit wrongdoing and of using a small sample of flawed loans as a basis for claims under the False Claims Act. Up to that time, Quicken Loans had been the subject of an ongoing DOJ probe, which began three years earlier, in relation to its FHA lending practices. Quicken also asserted that, before filing its lawsuit ...

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, chairman of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, has asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development to explain the duties and functions of two officials who were appointed as “principal deputy assistant secretary.” The appointments make it appear that HUD is deliberately circumventing the nomination process by creating new official titles for appointees without obtaining Senate confirmation, said Grassley. If that is the case, HUD Secretary Julian Castro may be in violation of the Vacancies Reform Act of 1998, the lawmaker warned. The statute provides several mechanisms to fill job positions that require candidates to be nominated by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate. “The Vacancies Act also declares that those mechanisms are the exclusive means of filling vacancies,” Grassley said. “Creating new job titles is not ...

VA Clarifies HUD-1 Itemization Requirements. The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Home Loan Guaranty office has issued guidance clarifying HUD-1 documentation and itemization requirements. The HUD-1 is a statement lenders furnish to borrowers at closing showing the actual settlement costs, including amounts paid to and by the settlement agent. The guidance clarifies and establishes VA policy regarding the following: itemization of lender/seller credits in the 200 series of the HUD-1; itemization of line 801 on the HUD-1; clarification that credits reflected on line 803 of the HUD-1 cannot offset allowable fees’ and itemization of line 802 on the HUD-1. Ginnie Mae Announces Update to Securitization of USDA Section 538 Multifamily Loans. Ginnie Mae has enhanced the securitization of rural, multifamily housing loans with a Department of Agriculture guaranty to make affordable housing available to ...

Republican leaders in the Senate and the House plan to press ahead with legislation to provide regulatory relief for mortgage lenders, especially for small community banks. It’s likely that provisions to automatically designate mortgages held in portfolio as qualified mortgages will be included in a legislative package the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee will mark up sometime in the middle of May. And Republicans might use...

Days after the full House of Representatives passed legislation that would amend the points-and-fees calculation in the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule, the bill ran into some sudden resistance on the other side of Capitol Hill. H.R. 685, the Mortgage Choice Act, is a bipartisan bill that would clarify that certain affiliated title costs do not count against the “qualified mortgage” 3 percent cap on points and fees under the bureau’s ATR rule. H.R. 685, introduced by Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-MI, with dozens of co-sponsors from both parties, would exclude from the definition of points and fees all title charges, regardless of whether they are charged by an affiliated company, provided they are bona fide and reasonable. Lawmakers in the House passed ...

The odds that the CFPB will publicly announce or tacitly concede some degree of soft enforcement of its integrated disclosure rule, known as TRID, may have improved recently when two Republican Congressmen called on the bureau to give the mortgage industry such a break when the rule kicks in Aug. 1, 2015. “We strongly encourage you to make the August 1, 2015, to December 31, 2015, timeframe a ‘hold harmless’ period of restrained enforcement and liability,” said Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO, and Randy Neugebauer, R-TX, in a letter recently sent to CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “This would allow all parties to better understand the changes associated with TRID and help ensure consumer confidence and stability in the nation's housing market,” ...

The Mortgage Bankers Association sent a letter to House Republican leadership recently in support of three bills that would restructure the CFPB. The bills include H.R. 1266, the Financial Products Safety Commission Act, which would replace the CFPB’s single-director governance structure with a five-member commission. “A commission structure assures judicious consideration of a range of viewpoints in carrying out regulatory functions with appropriate involvement of representatives of both parties and a range of interests including those of both consumers and industry,” the MBA said. There is also H.R. 1261, the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Accountability Act, which would subject the bureau to the congressional appropriations process. “It is important to note the legislation does not limit funding for the ...

Congresswoman Krysten Sinema, D-AZ, said that the CFPB can be a source of confusion for many in the mortgage industry. Although the overall idea of the bureau is sound, the implementation has been difficult, she said. “It’s been particularly frustrating for folks working in the industry,” she said at last week’s Mortgage Bankers Association’s National Advocacy Conference in Washington, DC. “Part of the frustration is that the CFPB is set up as an independent organization where Congress doesn’t have any kind of official oversight.” Sinema, a member of the House Committee on Financial Services, believes there’s a lot of room for growth in terms of accountability with the bureau, and said creating clearer rules is a part of it. “One ...

The CFPB doesn’t have enough power as currently authorized under the Dodd-Frank Act and should be given oversight over auto dealers, according to the “mother” of the bureau, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA. “The consumer agency’s early results have been good for consumers and good for the economy as a whole, but there’s more to be done,” Warren said in a speech last week. “Right now, the auto loan market looks increasingly like the pre-crisis housing market, with good actors and bad actors mixed together.” As the senator sees it, the market is now “thick with loose underwriting standards, predatory and discriminatory lending practices,” and increasing repossessions. She then cited one study that estimated that these kinds of auto dealer markups ...

CFPB Community Bank Advisory Council Meeting April 22. CFPB Director Richard Cordray plans to discuss credit scores and credit reporting and the related implications for community banks when the bureau convenes the next meeting of its Community Bank Advisory Council on April 22, from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., in Washington, DC. The event is scheduled to be held at the bureau’s location at 1275 First Street, N.E., and is open to the public, but an RSVP is required to attend. CFPB to Hold Research Conference May 7-8. The CFPB plans to host its first research conference May 7-8, 2015. The conference will focus on high-quality consumer finance research, with academic and government researchers presenting their research papers. “The goal ...