The changes the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently made to the points-and-fees calculation for “qualified mortgages” under its ability-to-repay final rule get rid of some of the double counting of loan originator compensation that was anticipated under the original rule, and make it easier to calculate who gets paid how much. But while several industry groups are generally pleased with the changes, mortgage brokers say the new rule leaves them at a huge competitive disadvantage. “By excluding from the points and fees calculation compensation paid...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development will face intense scrutiny from lawmakers after revelations this week that the department may have suppressed information indicating much higher projected losses for the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund than it reported to Congress. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, raised the issue in a May 29 letter to FHA Commissioner Carol Galante, citing suspicious email exchanges between certain top FHA officials and Tyler Yang, chairman and chief executive officer of Integrated Financial Engineering, which performed the FY 2012 actuarial audit of the fund. The letter is...
Despite the best efforts of supporters readying another push to legislatively enhance the Home Affordable Refinance Program, a proposed HARP 3.0 bill in the Senate will ultimately remain a once-interesting idea whose time has passed, say industry observers. From its initial introduction during the 112th Congress through subsequent tweaking and refiling earlier this year, the Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act of 2013, S. 249, by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Barbara Boxer, D-CA, has struggled to gain traction in the Senate. The Obama administration has mounted...
The FHA said it is working to define a “qualified mortgage” standard that meets the QM criteria under the Dodd-Frank Act, which takes higher priced mortgages into account.
The Inspector General of the Federal Reserve has initiated an evaluation of the CFPB’s integration of enforcement attorneys into its examinations of banks and nonbanks.
There is at least one curiosity in the GSE draft bill: any individual who ever served as a director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is prohibited from serving as a board member on the new Federal Mortgage Insurance Corp.
The expansion of the CFPB’s consumer complaint database moved to another level last week, with the inclusion of state-by-state searchable information, as well as complaints about money transfers and credit reporting. The updates, among other things, add a new field to every complaint – the state it came from. While five-digit ZIP Code information – provided by the consumer – has always been included in the complaint information, adding the state helps people more easily localize data, according to the bureau. The state...
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