Secondary mortgage market participants have expressed support for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s efforts to establish clear standards for mortgage servicing that would balance investor and borrower interests. Issued last week, the proposed rules focus primarily on borrower protection and are described as measures that would benefit borrowers by eliminating surprises and run-arounds. However, they do not address servicers’ conflicts of interest that result in servicer breaches, which mortgage-backed securities investors have raised in the past, and other investor complaints. Specifically, the proposed rules implement...

A three-judge federal panel this week agreed to hear a rare interlocutory appeal by one of the defendants in a series of lawsuits that the Federal Housing Finance Agency has filed in connection with non-agency MBS purchased by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals accepted UBS Americas’ appeal, which had been certified by Judge Denise Cote of the U.S. District Court of New York in late June. UBS seeks to re-argue and reverse Judge Cote’s May 4 denial of the bank’s motion to dismiss on statute of limitation grounds. The FHFA sued...

Two servicing rules proposed last week by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could shift more business to special servicers, according to industry analysts. While senior CFPB officials said that was not the intent of the proposals, special servicers appear to be better equipped than others to handle the complex new requirements. “The inadequate performance of many mortgage servicers has helped widen the misery for many Americans,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. He noted that the regulator ...

Federal regulators this week proposed requiring a physical inspection of a property’s interior by a qualified appraiser for originations of “higher-risk mortgages,” the latest proxy for subprime loans. The requirement was included in the Dodd-Frank Act and could prompt more than 50,000 new appraisals per year. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimated that full-interior appraisals are conducted as part of current practice in higher-risk mortgage originations on 95.0 percent of purchase-money transactions ...

Wells Fargo recently determined that it will refinance up to 40,000 borrowers as part of the recent $25.0 billion national servicing settlement. The bank had previously estimated that it would refi 20,000 loans under the settlement, which targets portfolio loans with negative equity. “The expectations ... exceed the amounts that would result from just meeting our minimum commitments under the refinance program due to the significantly higher than expected response we have received from our customers in ...

It has been another busy week in the turbulent world of litigation over non-agency mortgage-backed securities. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. filed lawsuits regarding non-agency MBS, Wells Fargo agreed to settle non-agency MBS-related charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice and the SEC dropped its non-agency investigation into actions by Goldman Sachs. The FDIC lawsuits against 15 issuers and underwriters relate to $1.46 billion in AAA tranches of non-agency MBS ...

Chase Home Finance knocked Bank of America off its second-place perch and joined top-ranked Wells Fargo as the dominant Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities issuers in 2012, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Database. Together, Wells Fargo and Chase accounted for 53.3 percent of the $100.6 billion Ginnie Mae MBS market in the second quarter of 2012, which grew 24.4 percent from the first quarter and a whopping 42.2 percent from the same period a year ago. Wells led with $42.6 billion and a commanding 42.2 percent piece of the Ginnie Mae MBS market, thanks to ... ( 2 charts)

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is looking into SunTrust Bank’s FHA-related lending practices, the bank reported in its latest regulatory filing. SunTrust, Atlanta’s largest bank, disclosed the investigation in its second-quarter filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission but provided no additional details. HUD notified the bank of the probe on April 25. SunTrust said it is “cooperating with the investigation,” which is being conducted by HUD’s Office of the Inspector General. The bank did not respond to a request for comment and the IG office neither ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is working in tandem with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to align servicing standards for both FHA and non-FHA mortgage loans. In a statement issued after the CFPB’s recent issuance of proposed national mortgage servicing standards, HUD underscored the importance of uniform servicing standards. “Given CFPB’s rulemaking, HUD does think it is important to not revise its servicing rules in a vacuum but to consider the work being done by the CFPB,” he said. “To that end, HUD is in communication with the CFPB and reviewing their materials.” The department is collaborating with an ...

A proposed rule that would require a flat fee for originating a mortgage loan with a Department of Veterans Affairs guaranty could do borrowers and lenders more harm than good, warned a coalition of financial services providers. The proposal is part of an upcoming Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rulemaking to implement certain provisions under the Dodd-Frank Act relating to loan originator compensation. The rulemaking raises a number of technical drafting issues that could have unintended consequences, cautioned ...