In response to President Trump’s recent executive orders on regulatory reform, the Department of Housing and Urban Development announced it is looking for industry feedback on any of its existing regulations that might be outdated, ineffective or excessively burdensome. As required by Executive Order 13777, “Reducing Regulation and Controlling Regulatory Costs,” HUD said it is in the process of establishing a regulatory task force charged with identifying agency regulations that should be repealed, replaced or modified. As part of that review, the agency is inviting the public to weigh in on the adequacy and relevancy of its current regulatory framework. “HUD’s goal in conducting the review is to make the department’s regulations more effective and less burdensome in achieving HUD’s ...
Financial Freedom, an Austin, TX-based servicer, agreed to an $89 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice to settle allegations that it violated the False Claims Act, the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery, and Enforcement Act, and FHA servicing requirements in connection with its participation in FHA’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgages, or “reverse mortgage,” program. The Justice Department alleged that Financial Freedom sought to obtain insurance payments for interest from FHA “despite failing to properly disclose on the insurance claim forms it filed with the agency that the mortgagee was not eligible for such interest payments because it had failed to meet various deadlines relating to appraisal of the property, submission of claims to the Department of Housing and Urban ...
This fall will mark – unless there’s divine intervention or a Kumbaya moment in Washington – the ninth anniversary of the federal takeover of Fannie and Freddie.
The VA panel presented several “egregious loan” scenarios involving reviews of several mortgages from 2016 in which lenders were required to sign indemnification agreements.