The Department of Housing and Urban Development has requested its inspector general to reconsider certain recommendations intended to toughen safety standards for drinking water in FHA-insured properties. Other lenders or appraisers could interpret imposing stringent requirements on a few FHA lenders wrongly, which could lead to unnecessary water testing simply to avoid future litigation risk, HUD warned in its response to audit findings. HUD disagreed that administrative action is warranted. “Due to potential unintended consequences, [HUD Single Family] does not believe the imposition of sanctions at this time presents a viable alternative,” the department wrote. While making changes to water-safety standards, HUD said it will train lenders and appraisers to ensure compliance with the revised standards. The IG audit came in the wake of a previous audit, which found that ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is discontinuing its quarterly newsletter, Lender Insight, with the implementation of FHA’s Loan Review System. The change is aimed at improving both FHA’s and lenders’ quality-control and risk-management operations. HUD will be publishing a quarterly Loan Review Summary Report to provide a snapshot of the results of FHA’s quality-control review of mortgage originations over the preceding 12 months. According to HUD, the report will include only underwritten loans that were subject to a post-endorsement technical review. It does not include the results of lenders’ self-reports or any other loans that were reviewed as part of a lender examination, the agency said. The report will show the initial rating of all loans, the updated rating six months from the end of the review period, and a final rating. The “final” rating is subject to change as long as ...

Fannie and Freddie continue to tweak their systems and processes to accommodate the new mandates, which kick in January 1…

In all of these agreements, Ocwen neither admitted nor denied liability…

Organizations representing different segments of the mortgage industry broadly support the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s plan to address the so-called black hole in the integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, or TRID. The black hole refers to situations in which a lender may not use a closing disclosure to reset fee tolerances. This causes closing delays due to fee changes that arise in the origination process ...

Efforts by Congressional Republicans to expand exemptions to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data collection and reporting requirements may or may not succeed. But any lender or aggregator seeking to sell eligible mortgages to the government-sponsored enterprises will still have to get with the program. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continue to tweak their systems and processes to accommodate the new mandates, scheduled to kick in Jan. 1 ...

“I’m not sure why there’s been such an escalation of it [the FCA],” said Carson.

The Treasury Department released a report late last week calling for a variety of regulatory reforms for the MBS and ABS markets. Many of the reforms aim to increase issuance and are likely to come into effect, particularly those that don’t require action by Congress. The recommendations were part of a response to an executive order issued by President Trump calling for regulators to identify actions to be taken to align financial regulations with “core principles” established by ...

Risk-retention requirements established by the Dodd-Frank Act generally require sponsors or contributing lenders to retain risk from MBS and ABS issuance to align their interests with those of investors. Some issuers are financing their risk-retention obligations even though regulations regarding such transactions are murky. “A security sponsor or majority-owned affiliate must reconcile a variety of different requirements in structuring a secured financing of its risk-retention ...

As Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders inch closer to having hundreds of government documents released in pending shareholder lawsuits surrounding the conservatorship and preferred stock purchase agreement, they are more confident the court will rule in their favor. In the latest development in Fairholme Funds v. the United States, Federal Claims Court Judge Margaret Sweeney last week granted a motion to compel the disclosure of documents filed over the summer by ...