CFPB, Fed, OCC Announce Threshold for Smaller Loan Exemption from Appraisal Requirements for Higher-Priced Mortgage Loans. Last week, the CFPB, the Federal Reserve and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced that the threshold for exempting loans from special appraisal requirements under the Dodd-Frank Act for higher-priced mortgage loans during 2016 will remain $25,500.The threshold amount will be effective January 1, 2016, and is the same threshold that applied in 2015 – based on the annual percentage decrease in the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W) as of June 1, 2015. ...

CFPB Attorney James Kim Joins DC Law Firm. James Kim, formerly a senior enforcement attorney with the CFPB, recently joined the Ballard Spahr law firm in its Washington, DC, office. “While at the CFPB, James led nationwide investigations involving consumer credit, mobile financial services, emerging payment systems, mortgage origination, and debt collection,” said new colleague Alan Kaplinsky, a partner at the law firm. “He was lead counsel in the CFPB’s first enforcement actions involving mobile payments and was a member of the credit card/prepaid card/emerging payments issue team that helped coordinate enforcement activity with other offices at the CFPB.” ...

Some investors won’t return to the non-agency MBS market until the federal government establishes minimum standards for issuers, according to Chris Katopis, executive director of the Association of Mortgage Investors. Speaking at the RMBS 3.0 symposium produced by Information Management Network and the Structured Finance Industry Group this month in New York, Katopis said investors are frustrated with the lack of action from the government to help the non-agency MBS market. “We know there’s a lot of work going on, but at some point the government has to set minimum standards,” he said.Katopis said investors are happy that SFIG is working on a new representation-and-warranty framework for non-agency MBS. However, the AMI is skeptical of voluntary industry standards. “Having ...

Two former officials at Standard & Poor’s called on the Securities and Exchange Commission to look for violations of new rules involving rating shopping. The SEC published a final rule with new requirements for rating services in August 2014. In a recent paper, Mark Adelson and David Jacob pushed the SEC to use the new rule to go after rating services that make adjustments to rating criteria in an effort to gain business, with a focus on the structured-finance market. Adelson and Jacob said such rating shopping by issuers has been “widespread” since the mid-1990s. Adelson was S&P’s chief credit officer from May 2008 until December 2011. He is currently the chief strategy officer of The BondFactor Company, which focuses ...

A handful of publicly traded real estate investment trusts have been quietly making inquiries about buying residential loans that do not meet the qualified mortgage standard, including subprime credits and even unsecured consumer loans, according to players on both sides of the equation. One executive who manages a REIT that plays in the jumbo market admitted as much in an interview with Inside MBS & ABS, but pointed to one major deterrent: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. “We’ve tried to get clarifications from them on such things as the ability-to-pay rule, but they haven’t been very helpful,” he said. The source noted that his REIT has so far avoided buying any nonprime, non-QM loans, saying he fears the regulator will ...

Acting on a new policy that increases the focus on prosecuting individuals for corporate wrong-doing, the Department of Justice is reportedly planning to file criminal charges against executives at JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Scotland for the alleged pre-crisis sale of non-agency MBS to unsuspecting investors, the Wall Street Journal has reported. According to the report, the DOJ investigations were based on documents that allegedly suggested that shortly before the mortgage meltdown, executives at the two financial institutions securitized mortgages and sold them to investors knowing that the underlying loans were defective. The JPMorgan probe began after prosecutors uncovered crucial evidence from a related civil investigation in 2007: a memo from a bank employee cautioning senior executives about ...

Trade groups representing participants in the primary mortgage market and the non-agency mortgage-backed security market are calling on federal banking regulators to address state laws that allow for “super-priority” status for homeowners’ association liens. Risks from HOA super-priority liens have been of particular concern following a September 2014 ruling by the Nevada Supreme Court. The court allowed for a homeowners’ association foreclosure sale to ...

The Structured Finance Industry Group and the Treasury Department continue to work on complementary initiatives to revive the non-agency mortgage-backed security market. SFIG’s upcoming plans include a push for transparency among issuers, while the Treasury has shifted its focus somewhat away from a benchmark non-agency MBS transaction. Eric Kaplan, a managing director at Shellpoint Partners and one of the leaders of SFIG’s RMBS 3.0 effort, said SFIG is ...

The first nine months of 2015 have seen a tremendous increase in FHA single-family originations as borrowers took advantage of a 50 basis-point premium reduction implemented earlier this year, according to Inside FHA/VA Lending’s analysis of agency data. Total FHA loan production during the first nine months of 2015 was up a whopping 81.3 percent increase. Data also showed a 13.1 percent increase in the third quarter from the prior quarter. It is hard to imagine that back in February this year, we reported a dismal ending for 2014, where overlays and high-loan costs caused an 8.1 percent decline in FHA endorsements in the fourth quarter and a 36.6 percent drop from 2013. In 2015, FHA fixed-rate originations increased 12.7 percent from the second to the third quarter, and rose 86.0 percent on a year-to-date basis. In 2014, conversion ... [ 2 charts ].

President Obama last week threatened to veto legislation progressing in Congress to provide qualified-mortgage status to loans held in portfolio by depository institutions. Industry analysts suggest that the bill still has a chance at being signed into law, if adjustments are made. The House approved H.R. 1210, the Portfolio Lending and Mortgage Access Act, on a 255-174 vote last week. Similar legislation is under consideration in the Senate. The bill in the House would ...