The Federal Housing Finance Agency and the city of Chicago have reached a face-saving settlement in a longstanding legal dispute over whether Fannie and Freddie, as entities under federal conservatorship, are subject to the city’s vacant-building ordinance. Under the terms of a settlement reached earlier this month but announced last week, the two GSEs will voluntarily register vacant properties with the city but won’t be subject to a $500 registration fee. The FHFA will also no longer seek to recover registration fees or penalties already paid to Chicago.

The recently installed head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is getting a lot of conflicting advice about whether Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should contribute to the housing trust funds. Last week in a letter to FHFA Director Mel Watt, House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, urged Watt to continue the Finance Agency’s five-year old policy of withholding GSE contributions to the trust funds. Hensarling’s letter – co-signed by Reps. Scott Garrett, R-NJ, and Ed Royce, R-CA – followed a similar letter by GOP senators in early March, which countered a January letter by 33 Democrats calling on Watt to authorize Fannie and Freddie funding to the National Housing Trust Fund immediately.

In the wake of sharp increases in commercial bank borrowing from the Federal Home Loan Bank system in order to keep up with new international bank-liquidity rules, the Federal Housing Finance Agency should be more transparent in reporting FHLBank advances, according to the agency’s official watchdog. The FHFA’s Office of Inspector General noted in an audit released Wednesday that FHLBank system advances have been increasing, reaching $492 billion by year-end 2013. The growth in advances has been driven primarily by the four largest members of the system – JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

The CFPB needs to up its game and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of its supervisory activities, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Office of Inspector General, the IG for the bureau. “Specifically, we found that the CFPB needs to improve its reporting timeliness and reduce the number of examination reports that have not been issued, adhere to its unequivocal standards concerning the use of standard compliance rating definitions in its examination reports, and update its policies and procedures to reflect current practices,” the OIG said. The report contains 12 recommendations designed to assist the CFPB in strengthening its supervision program, one of which is to monitor the timeliness of examination reporting against the requirements the agency...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has sent a draft 2014 Conservatorship Scorecard to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for review, but it remains unclear how different it will be from the GSE goals the FHFA set for last year. According to industry officials who have been briefed on the matter, the scorecard will likely be released by month’s end. The scorecard was the brainchild of former FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco, who led the agency for more than four years before former Rep. Mel Watt, D-NC, assumed a five-year term as the agency’s director in early January.

The former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency tendered his resignation from the FHFA last week in order to “seek other opportunities.” Edward DeMarco, who served as the agency’s “temporary” head from September 2009 until January 2014, submitted his resignation – effective April 30 – to his successor, FHFA Director Mel Watt. Far from unexpected, DeMarco’s exit from the agency was seen within many industry circles as inevitable once the Senate confirmed Watt to a five-year term as director.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s oversight of Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s pre-foreclosure inspection process can and should be enhanced by strengthening quality assurance and controls, according to a new audit by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General. The FHFA-OIG audit found potential fraud in property inspection reports ordered by the two GSEs. Among the findings: the property inspection reports – which are used for foreclosures – contained inaccurate information that conflicted with corresponding photographs.

The Securities and Exchange Commission late last week gave the securities industry another month to file comments on a proposed rule that most participants already know they don’t like. Comments were originally due March 28 on the SEC’s latest proposal to require asset-backed securities issuers to make loan-level details about pending issues available to investors on their own websites, rather than the agency’s Electronic Data-Gathering, Analysis and Retrieval system. On the day the comment period ended, the SEC extended it to April 28. Many issuers and large banks think...

The CFPB appears to be having a hard time holding on to some of its top officers who are leaving for more lucrative jobs in the private sector. Then again, no one really expected the government agency to have much luck competing against the deep pockets of megabanks like Wells Fargo. This month alone, Wells Fargo recruited two bureau executives who were considered among its very best, at least in the mortgage space: Lisa Applegate, who was in charge of mortgage rule implementation at the agency, and Pete Carroll, assistant director for mortgage markets.

The Republican-controlled House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations plans to hold a hearing on allegations of discrimination and retaliation within the CFPB on the morning of April 2, 2014. “Committee staff has received corroborating information from a CFPB employee who alleges she has experienced gender discrimination and retaliation for filing an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint with the CFPB’s Human Capital Office,” said a committee memorandum accompanying the committee’s announcement.