Republican congressional leadership commemorated the fifth anniversary of the Dodd-Frank Act this week by bashing the massive legislation. But there was not a single mention of making any changes to the mortgage-related provisions in the law. However, Republican leaders of the House Financial Services Committee and the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee demonstrated varying degrees of optimism about enacting broader changes to the controversial law. During a Dodd-Frank discussion forum early this week at the American Enterprise Institute, HFSC Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, in response to a question about the political prospects for reform, said...
It’s been 2.5 years since the Federal Housing Finance Agency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced they were joining forces to begin compiling a National Mortgage Database, and the project continues to spook some in the industry. Several news reports over the past week have billed the initiative as part of the Obama administration’s “secret race database,” based on a report last week by Paul Sperry, a fellow at the Hoover Center. The Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to defend the project as a tool to help regulators ward off future mortgage crises. The NMD will be...
The titans of the industry – the four banks with over $1 trillion in total assets – shrank their mortgage portfolios by a combined 0.5 percent over that period.