The Federal Housing Finance Agency has revised and consolidated its categories for safety and soundness and Affordable Housing Program examination findings pertaining to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, the FHFA announced in a recent advisory bulletin. Examination findings are deficiencies related to risk management, risk exposure, or violations of laws, regulations or orders that affect the performance or condition of a regulated entity, according to the FHFA.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s mortgage servicers will soon be required to review and respond to short sale requests within 30 days of an offer on the property and to provide weekly status updates if the offer is still under review after that, under new standards issued this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Under the new guidance, effective June 15, servicers will have to make a final decision within 60 days of receiving an offer on a short sale property. The FHFA said the change is an attempt to hasten the traditionally time-consuming and difficult primary alternative to foreclosure.

Almost half of lenders believe that strategic defaults will increase in 2012, a specter that continues to affect national housing policy. There are no reliable data regarding strategic defaults in the U.S., considering the secrecy inherent in the act. That has forced policymakers to make dollars-and-cents decisions based on conjecture about borrower behavior. A new FICO survey found that 46 percent of bank risk professionals expect the number of strategic defaults in 2012 to surpass those in 2011. Survey participants had a generally pessimistic view of homeowners’ regard for their mortgage...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week indicated it will be pulling out its disparate impact playbook as it launches an offensive against the providers of mortgage credit and other lenders it believes are engaging in discriminatory behavior towards consumers. “We want consumers to avoid the marketplace’s silent pickpocket – discrimination,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “We cannot afford to tolerate practices, intentional or not, that unlawfully price out or cut off segments of the population from the credit markets.” In CFPB Bulletin 2012-04 (Fair Lending), the bureau asserted its...

Some liberal interest groups are questioning whether the RMBS working group formed by federal and state enforcement agencies to coordinate securitization investigations is moving fast enough. In an email circulated earlier this week, CREDO, a progressive network, wrote that the Department of Justice has yet to deliver on its promise of 55 investigators to the RMBS working group. As federal and state enforcement agencies were wrapping up the contentious $25 billion settlement with five mortgage servicers in late January, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced a new task force designed to “stream...

The mortgage banking industry got some advance notice this week on the direction the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau plans on taking when it issues a mortgage servicing proposed rule later this summer. The CFPB said it wants to design mortgage servicing rules to keep mortgage borrowers from getting stuck with costly surprises because of a lack of transparency or getting the runaround from their mortgage servicer because of a lack of accountability. “In recent years, many borrowers have complained that they did not receive the information they needed to help avoid foreclosure,” CFPB Director Richard...

A conflict-of-interest provision in the $25 billion robo-signing settlement approved by the court last week could make it harder for independent settlement monitor Joseph Smith to organize an oversight monitoring team within the agreement’s timeline. Smith, North Carolina’s former commissioner of banks, may have to issue or seek clarifying guidelines that would allow him to recruit attorneys and other professionals for his monitoring team and begin a phased implementation of the settlement’s servicing standards and mandatory relief requirements, according to an industry attorney. Last week...

Federally regulated banking institutions may now hang the “for rent” sign on houses in their portfolio of residential “other real estate owned” properties as an alternative to selling difficult to move OREOs, according to new guidance released by the Federal Reserve. Last week, the Fed issued a policy statement reiterating that federal statutes and its own regulations permit the rental of residential properties acquired in foreclosure as part of an orderly disposition strategy. “The general policy of the Federal Reserve is that banking organizations should make good faith efforts to dispose of...

Senate Democrats would like to see the Federal Housing Finance Agency loosen even further the refinancing restrictions on GSE mortgages and they’ve got a couple of pointers on how to make it so. Last week, Democrats on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, led by Chairman Tim Johnson, SD, wrote FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco to encourage the Finance Agency to take the Home Affordable Refinance Program beyond HARP 2.0.

Three former Fannie Mae executives, including the company’s one-time CEO, have petitioned a federal judge to toss the securities fraud case the government filed against them late last year. Filed last week in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the motion to dismiss contends the Securities and Exchange Commission is thin on proof that the GSE, at the direction of the then top executives, failed to disclose to investors the companies’ exposure to subprime mortgages prior to the 2008 housing market crash.