The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency will host workshops for directors of nationally chartered community banks and federal savings associations in New York at the Hilton New York, June 28-29, 2011...

Staff at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and other legal professionals are scrutinizing the fundamental questions the foreclosure crisis has raised about the adequacy of the legal framework for modern mortgage note transactions, especially when it comes to transferring and enforcing notes and mortgages, and how best to resolve them. The role of the Mortgage Electronic Registration System is a part of the discussion. To date, they are relying upon a number of issues that have been identified in a draft discussion document prepared recently by the Permanent Editorial Board of the Uniform Commercial Code, in conjunction with...

FHA loans in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware performed better in 2008 and in 2009 than in 2006 and 2007 as credit quality became stronger, according to a new study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. The findings should allay concerns of policymakers in Washington, DC, that FHA defaults have risen during the housing crisis and may put the federal mortgage insurance fund in peril, the study said. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, one of the data sources used by Fed analysts, indicate that overall lending patterns in the Third District states have ...

The federal government's gradual pullback as an investor in the MBS market is beginning to open more space for commercial banks and other private investors. Commercial banks increased their investment in residential MBS by a solid 6.5 percent during the first quarter, pushing their combined holdings to a record $1.311 trillion. That represented about 20.0 percent of an overall MBS market that has been shrinking since the third quarter of 2009. Bank holdings of residential MBS were up 14.2 percent from the first quarter of last year. Through the U.S. Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the retained holdings of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the federal government held... [Includes two data charts]

Effective July 1, reporting of tax information to investors of Ginnie Mae securities will move from e-Access to the Ginnie Mae Enterprise-Wide Portal (GMEP), which now serves as the single access point for all of the agency's online business applications. The e-Access function for uploading quarterly widely held fixed investment trust (WHFIT) reporting files for investors would no longer ...

Government housing policy and agencies played a much larger role in the housing crisis than initially believed, but a fresh look at the conclusions of two GSE critics has prompted a top JPMorgan Chase analyst to take the unusual step of issuing a public retraction.

Faced with a declining originations outlook, mortgage lenders should take advantage of today's more plentiful warehouse lending environment to review strategies that were developed during the liquidity crisis, industry experts say. The warehouse capacity issue has swung 180 degrees from where it was a few years ago, said Elaine Batlis, a senior vice president at Silvergate Bank, during last week's national secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. Back in 2006-07, there was an oasis of liquidity; pricing was good and terms were flexible, Batlis said. But in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008, there was a sudden...

Although the new repurchase claims submitted by investors to mortgage lenders appeared to ease in the first quarter of 2011, the industry continues to carry a growing inventory of unresolved buyback demands. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac reported that lender repurchases or indemnifications totaled $2.8 billion during the first quarter of 2011. That was down from $5.9 billion in the previous quarter, a figure that was swollen by Bank of America's large-scale settlement of buyback demands from both government-sponsored enterprises. In fact, the volume of GSE repurchases during the first three months of 2011 was the lowest quarterly volume since... [Includes one graph and one data chart]

In a business dominated by a handful of super-sized national lenders and production volume in a nosedive, lenders have to pay more attention to how they compete for the dwindling pool of potential borrowers. Spending more time on acquiring industry knowledge and reaching out to customers will pump up originators' performance, according to a recent report released by Mortgage Source Success, a client acquisition and retention solution provider. "In less than a decade, mortgage loan origination in the U.S. has been turned on its head," the report said. "Not only has the economic crisis severely reduced the number and dollar-volume of originations, but...

Look for refinance activity to continue to decline throughout the year, experts warn, but only a small percentage of those homeowners who do take a seat at the closing table will be "cash-out" borrowers. Freddie Mac reported last week that during the first quarter of 2011, only 25 percent of those who refinanced their existing mortgage loans pulled cash out of their home. Among refi loans, the average cash-out share - which Freddie defines as when the loan balance is increased by at least 5 percent - over the past 25 years was 62 percent. Even more surprising, Freddie noted that a record 21 percent of refi borrowers actually reduced their principal balance by...