U.S. Congress. Lawmakers Return Next Week. The U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives are slated to convene at 2 p.m. Monday, Sept. 10. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. New Senior Counsel Comes on Board. Chris Lipsett is joining the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau as senior counsel in the office of the director. Lipsett was previously a partner in the law firm of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr, where his practice focused on regulatory, compliance, counseling, litigation, and transactional matters...

Fannie Mae recently added Nationstar Mortgage, PHH Mortgage, Seterus and Green Tree Servicing to the list of its top performing servicers for the first half of 2012. They join Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, GMAC Mortgage and EverBank in the government-sponsored enterprise’s Peer Group One as the largest firms with the highest scores. “Fannie Mae wants servicers to be responsive to homeowners who are struggling and work with them to prevent as many foreclosures as possible,” said Leslie Peeler, Fannie’s...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development appears to have lost a round in its fight to bring an alleged FHA defrauder to justice. HUD suffered a setback recently after U.S. District Judge Gray Miller in Houston granted declaratory relief to Allied Home Mortgage Corp. (AHMC) to challenge HUD’s suspension of the lender’s authority to originate and underwrite FHA-insured loans. The Houston-based lender contends that HUD acted capriciously and arbitrarily without due process of law. It based these claims on ...

The reverse mortgage lending industry urged state regulators to update the existing reverse mortgage examination guidelines (RMEG) to conform to regulatory changes that have occurred in the market in the last three years. The National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association (NRMLA) submitted proposed changes to the Conference of State Bank Supervisors regarding term definitions, examiner checklist, product descriptions, comparison worksheet, mandatory housing counseling, as well as other sections. The CSBS jointly published the ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it will step up its oversight of the department’s loan quality review to ensure that weaknesses, such as those uncovered in a recent internal audit, will not happen again. An audit performed by the agency’s Office of the Inspector General concluded that HUD’s Quality Assurance Division had adequate oversight of lenders’ compliance with FHA underwriting standards but for two loans that apparently eluded reviewers. QAD reviewers are required to ...

Industry trade groups last week gave the Department of Housing and Urban Development another nudge to lift the moratorium on investor participation in the FHA 203(k) property rehabilitation program. Following up on an industry request in June, the Mortgage Bankers Association, the National Association of Realtors and the National Association of Home Builders in a joint letter to HUD reiterated the importance of the 203(k) program in reducing the current real estate-owned (REO) inventory and addressing the oversupply of housing. The groups said the program ...

Liquidity requirements apply only to the required minimum net worth of FHA-approved lenders and mortgagees, not to their total net worth, according to a final rule issued recently by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The rule clarifies language in FHA regulations, which has caused some confusion and anxiety among approved lenders, lawyers and other regulators, said HUD. HUD made clear that the rule simply requires FHA lenders to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has issued new rules for qualifying borrowers who list Social Security income on their application for an FHA-insured mortgage loan.The number of FHA borrowers with verified Social Security income is unknown because HUD does not track borrowers’ source of income, according to a department spokesperson. But industry observers said the number may not be significant. Nonetheless, lenders would need to request several important documents from borrowers who would rely on SS income to qualify for an FHA home loan, the new rules state. These documents include ...

$7.5 Million FHA Mortgage Fraud Scheme. The Department of Justice has filed charges against top executives of a real estate brokerage for their participation in a mortgage fraud scheme that may cost the FHA $7.5 million in losses. Indictments were unsealed earlier this month in Manhattan federal court charging Mitchell Cohen and Erin Davis, the owner and sales manager, respectively, of Buy-A-Home, a real estate brokerage business in Queens, NY. The criminal charges follow a civil fraud lawsuit filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York last December against ...

A lawsuit filed last week by Bank of New York Mellon against WMC Mortgage and GE Mortgage Holdings is the latest sign that repurchase issues on non-agency mortgage-backed securities are increasing. After years of resistance, trustees are starting to act on behalf of non-agency MBS investors seeking repurchases. Three of the four major banks reported increases in non-agency repurchase requests in the second quarter of 2012 compared with the previous quarter, according to an analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets ...