The Federal Communications Commission has refused an industry request to exempt mortgage servicing calls from prohibitions against the use of “robocalls,” or automated dialing and calling systems, to contact delinquent borrowers on their cell phones. In a long-awaited final rule limiting the way servicers can collect on student loans, mortgages and other debts owed to the federal government, the FCC said it would not make a decision on whether the statutory exemption from the Telephone Consumer Protection Act’s “prior express consent” requirements applies to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans or their servicers. The TCPA and FCC regulations require...

A shortage of appraisers and rising mortgage activity has prompted appraisal issues to account for more delayed closings, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. For home sales closed in July after experiencing a delay, appraisal-related issues accounted for the delay 14.1 percent of the time, based on a three-month moving average. That was up from a 12.4 percent share the previous month and nearly double the 7.2 percent share in January. “Closing times are...

Rising costs for mortgage servicing and more frequent transfers have become key issues for the industry, according to panelists at a seminar hosted by the Urban Institute and CoreLogic last week. Ed DeMarco, former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency and now a senior fellow at the Milken Institute, said that mortgage servicing compensation has not changed in decades as the servicing industry itself has undergone what he called “profound changes.” He noted...

New disclosures on risk-sharing transactions from Freddie Mac provide some details on the automated valuation model used by the government-sponsored enterprise to determine home prices and loan-to-value ratios. Freddie’s AVM – Home Value Explorer – provides home price valuations that are a little higher than the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, according to analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The analysts based their findings on estimates of current LTV ratios that Freddie recently added to monthly loan-level disclosures on Structured Agency Credit Risk transactions. LTV ratios based on Freddie’s AVM were...

The nation’s three largest residential servicers – Wells Fargo, Chase and Bank of America – all showed sequential increases in late payments...

Nine nonbanks reported a combined net loss of $339.5 million on mortgage-banking activity for 2Q16, but that was actually an improvement...

KBW believes all the GSE risk-sharing deals will “put further pressure” on the long-term value of the stocks of Fannie and Freddie…

By itself, the FHA insured 37.1 percent of first-timer business in the first half of 2016…

The call-report data pose an interesting, and contrary, view of the banking industry’s mortgage-banking activity during the second quarter…

Stratmor based its findings on results from 36 companies. Most of the focus was on retail lending.