Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems has been at the center of two significant developments recently that bring more legal clarity to the mortgage industry’s foreclosure practices – and could portend a quicker resolution of an enormous number of cases currently tied up in foreclosure. Early this week, the U.S. Supreme Court denied certiorari in Gomes v. Countrywide, declining to reconsider lower court rulings in the case, essentially affirming MERS’ authority to foreclose in California in the process. “The petition for a writ of certiorari is denied,” the high court said in its certiorari summary dispositions. “The chief justice [John Roberts] took...

The head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency says his agency expects to complete a review of potential improvements to the Home Affordable Refinance Program “by the end of this month” but based on what they heard during a private meeting last week, dissatisfied House Democrats say they expect the results won’t nearly be good enough. FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco met last week with a group of 17 congressmen, led by Reps. Dennis Cardoza, D-CA, and Elijah Cummings, D-MD, to discuss ways to reinvigorate the underwhelming Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac refinance program. In what’s been described as a...

A scathing criticism of the way the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Freddie Mac handled a $1.35 billion settlement with Bank of America could cause the regulator and the government-sponsored enterprises to tighten repurchase enforcement – and consequently inflate the buyback problem, according to litigation experts. Speaking on a recent webinar hosted by Inside Mortgage Finance, experts said a report by the FHFA’s Office of the Inspector General which found flaws in the BofA settlement approval process, could push the GSEs and their regulator to lean harder on major lenders to repurchase “bad loans.” This, in turn, could...

In five years, the mortgage servicing business will likely be dramatically different than it is now or has been in the past, experts say, and getting there won’t be easy. “Homeowners think servicing is about them, that the industry should be trying to solve their problems,” said Peter Swire, a law professor at Ohio State, during a panel at this week’s Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention. “But the servicer is working primarily for the investor,” he said, adding that the “legal structure of servicing makes the homeowner extraneous.” Although there is widespread acknowledgement that change is necessary, the significant...

More people than expected showed up at the Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention this week in Chicago – including intermittent Occupy protestors – given the hugely uncertain prospects facing the industry. MBA economists are predicting less than $1 trillion in new originations in 2012, which would be the lowest new production volume since 1997, and all three major components in the business – origination, servicing and secondary marketing – face huge structural challenges that so far are still just vaguely mapped out. Yet attendance was up about 18 percent from last year, and several observers noted that investors are...

A “who’s who” list of a number of the largest and most well-known mortgage lenders in the country – including Wells Fargo, Countrywide Home Loans, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, PNC Bank, GMAC Mortgage Corp., Citimortgage and Suntrust Mortgage – have been accused by two whistle-blower types of charging U.S. military veterans illegal fees to refinance their home mortgages. According to the accusations, made in a complaint unsealed in federal court in Atlanta late last week, the mortgage lending entities charged refinance fees that are prohibited by the Department of Veterans Affairs and hid the charges by padding or inflating other allowable charges so they could obtain government guarantees for the mortgages, all without telling the veterans.

Mortgage banking activity was one bright spot in an otherwise lackluster earnings period, according to a third quarter review by analysts at FBR Capital Markets. “Activity was up 35 percent from 2Q11 as we saw lower interest rates drive another refinance boom, whereby refinances accounted for almost 80 percent of all originations,” FBR said. The analysts expect originations and gain-on-sale margins to be up significantly from 2Q11 due to the persistent decline of mortgage rates through the quarter. “We continue to recommend investors stick with banks that have sizable mortgage banking operations because refinance levels should stay elevated from low interest rates, and some large players have exited the business, which should bode well for gain-on-sale margins,” the FBR team said.

Federal Housing Finance Agency. OIG Finds Room for Improvement. The FHFA recognizes how important it is to oversee Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s default-related legal services, but it needs to improve its capacity to identify new and emerging areas of risk, according to a new report released by the agency’s Office of Inspector General. Additionally, “FHFA does not have a continuous supervision plan or detailed examination guidance to govern its oversight of Fannie’s Retained Attorney Network, and it had not accomplished any targeted examinations of the RAN until it initiated a special review in late 2010, which has not yet been published,” the OIG said. Moreover, “FHFA also has not developed formal policies to address poor performance by law firms that have relationships – either directly through contract or through its loan servicers – with both enterprises to ensure that information is shared.”

California. The state amended a number of its mortgage loan originator licensing provisions under the California Finance Lenders Law last week, including one amendment that permits applicants who have an expunged or pardoned felony conviction to obtain a license. The underlying crime, facts or circumstances can be considered when determining whether to issue a license. Another amendment permits a person exempt from the California Finance Lenders Law to register with the Commissioner of Corporations so as to sponsor one or more individuals required to be licensed under the SAFE Act if specific requirements are met.

One of the emerging supervisory issues for state-regulated mortgage lenders is whether there should be some sort of formal ombudsman office or function within the Multistate Mortgage Committee or at least perhaps an informal “feedback loop” in the context of a multistate examination, according to lender representatives, industry attorneys and state officials themselves. “Right now, there is no formal or even informal feedback loop for licensed companies who are dealing with MMC issues to go back to the Conference of State Bank Supervisors or American Association of Residential Mortgage Regulators to talk about issues in general,” explained Donald Lampe, partner and head of the financial services regulatory and compliance practice at Dykema.