The Federal Housing Finance Agency has skimped in its oversight of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s budgets, in most cases not approving them until well after the start of the government-sponsored enterprises’ fiscal years, according to the Inspector General of the FHFA. The FHFA’s budget review and approval process for Fannie and Freddie is seriously flawed and plagued with cursory-level analysis and inadequate resources, the IG said. The agency generally agreed with the IG report and overhauled its budget-review process in July 2015. The IG noted...

Roughly 45 percent of FHA-insured, first-lien purchase mortgages had annual percentage rates in excess of the reporting threshold...

It appears that lenders were encouraging their loan officers to get applications in before the Oct. 3 implementation of the new RESPA-TILA integrated disclosure rule.

When the news broke about Stonegate this past summer, FBR issued a note to its clients saying that, “We expect the company has two options: hire a replacement CEO quickly, or sell the business altogether.”

The flow of FHA purchase mortgages jumped 37.7 percent from the second to the third quarter, and VA purchase mortgages rose 37.9 percent over the same period.

In his rebuttal to the IG’s findings, FHFA acting deputy director of conservatorships, Bob Ryan, concurs with some of the IG’s recommendations but takes issue with other aspects of the report.

Where's the demand? Only seven jumbo MBS were priced during the third quarter.

The use of proprietary mods by banks was essentially level compared with the second quarter of 2014 while the number of HAMP restructurings declined by 42.9 percent.

Anyone familiar with equities knows that shorting stocks can be a dangerous game. Then again, it's Ocwen...

The CFPB and all of the prudential banking regulators will recognize the good-faith efforts of the mortgage industry to comply with the bureau’s Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule as of its effective date of Oct. 3, 2015. “During initial examinations for compliance with the rule, the agencies’ examiners will evaluate an institution’s compliance management system and overall efforts to come into compliance, recognizing the scope and scale of changes necessary for each supervised institution to achieve effective compliance,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray, in a letter to industry trade groups. “Examiners will expect supervised entities to make good-faith efforts to comply with the rule’s requirements in a timely manner,” the director continued. “Specifically,...