Former FHA chief David Stevens said use of the False Claims Act as a “legal sledgehammer will now be tested by one of the highest quality FHA lenders in the nation.”
Recent actions by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the government-sponsored enterprises and FHA to make it easier for borrowers to get a mortgage are probably going to be an inconsequential wash overall, according to a panel of industry representatives and policy experts. However, there was some optimism expressed as well. Commenting on last week’s changes from the FHFA on GSE guaranty fees and loan-level price adjustments, Ron Haynie, senior vice president of ...
Quicken Loans this week went where no lender in the mortgage industry has gone before: Suing the U.S. government for suggesting it’s been doing a crappy job of originating FHA loans. Its legal action not only caught most of the industry by surprise, but resulted in loud applause from the Mortgage Bankers Association and K&L Gates partner Larry Platt. A number of major lenders have paid...
DOJ cites an email written by a Quicken divisional vice president for underwriting who brags that the lender has a team that is “responsible to pushback on appraisers questioning their appraised values.”
The CFPB brought an enforcement action against RMK Financial Corp., a California-based mortgage lender, for allegedly using deceptive mortgage advertising practices, including ads that led consumers to believe that the company was affiliated with the U.S. government. According to the CFPB, RMK used the names and logos of the Department of Veterans Affairs and the FHA in mailed advertisements in such a way as to falsely imply that the ads were sent by the VA or FHA, or that the company or the mortgage products it advertised were endorsed or sponsored by those agencies. RMK’s ads also allegedly misrepresented the loans’ interest rates and estimated monthly payments, including whether the interest rate was fixed or variable. Consumers who called the ...