Before we get to the main event (the ‘Qualified Mortgage’ rule), it’s time to consider the improving fate of Fannie Mae, which is poised to have a few coming quarters of blow-out earnings – which will go directly into the coffers of the U.S. Treasury Department, much to the delight of the newly nominated secretary Jack Lew.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau may reconsider certain regulatory exemptions to its servicing rules as they pertain to small servicers, agency counsel Mitchell Hochberg said during an Inside Mortgage Finance webinar late Tuesday afternoon.

The Obama administration may want to think twice before moving ahead with reported plans to replace Edward DeMarco, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s acting director, says a long time industry observer.

Residential servicers, in certain cases, will need to navigate substantial legal and regulatory crosscurrents when it comes to new and pending federal and state requirements, a representative for the nation’s largest loan processor told participants during a recent webinar sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance.

Happy New Year? It is if you’re a mortgage attorney charging billable hours to lenders that are trying to make sense of an array of pending rules coming out of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and other agencies.

The American Bankers Insurance Association is calling upon the CFPB to reconsider the "force-placed" insurance notice provisions in the bureau's newly issued mortgage servicing rules, arguing they go beyond what the Dodd-Frank Act intended, could disrupt the market in unintended ways and have a negative effect on consumers. Force-placed insurance is coverage that the servicer buys on the property when the borrower no longer has property insurance. Without such coverage, whoever holds the mortgage would be at risk if the house were to be damaged or destroyed. But often the borrower may be responsible...

The CFPB has promulgated its loan originator compensation final rule, perhaps most notable for what it didn't include. Industry groups had urged the bureau to drop from the final rule its proposed "zero-zero alternative that would have required lenders to offer a loan option with no discount points or origination fees any time they offered a mortgage with such payment features. Industry representatives said...

In a development that could inject turmoil and chaos into the CFPB’s regulatory sphere of influence, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has declared the three recess appointments President Barack Obama made to the National Labor Relations Board early last year to be unconstitutional. The judges said the appointments were illegitimate because the Senate was not actually in recess when they were made. “Considering the text, history and structure of the Constitution, these appointments were invalid from their inception,” the ruling stated. Here’s why this is...

A day before a federal appeals court declared his three recess appointments to the National Labor Relations Board to be unconstitutional, President Barack Obama again nominated Richard Cordray to be the director of the CFPB, setting the stage for another potentially bitter confrontation with Republican opponents in the Senate. Obama made a recess appointment of Cordray to his current position at the same time he made his NLRB moves, early last year, bypassing the traditional Senate confirmation process in an end-around to fierce opposition from GOP members in the chamber. The problem for the president is...

Although the CFPB is done – for now – with its regulations governing what servicers can do regarding their residential mortgage customers, there’s still one area they intend to explore: servicing transfers. At a regulatory field hearing in Baltimore earlier this month, agency officials said they will look into the issue. How far it will go is another matter. “They’re definitely working...