The Mortgage Bankers Association this week declined to participate in a panel discussion on FHA hosted by the American Enterprise Institute because the trade group did not believe the discussion would be balanced and though it would favor only a certain point of view. The topic was “FHA from 1934 to 1938: Lessons for Wealth Building,” with Ed Pinto, a resident fellow at AEI, and Dave Stevens, MBA president, as presenters. Stevens, however, decided to pull out of the event when he saw the format. In a letter to the AEI organizers, Stevens said he agreed to be a presenter thinking the debate “would be a balanced approach.” “When I first agreed to do this, I did not expect that the format would be 45 minutes of [Ed Pinto] and then no more than 12 minutes for me to respond,” he wrote. “That’s an extremely lopsided approach that did not appear to be ...

Meanwhile, the FOMC indicated it will continue to reinvest principal payments from its holdings of agency debt and MBS.

Home-equity lending continued to grow during the third quarter of 2014 – in fact, it was the fastest-growing segment of the mortgage market – but depository institutions reported further declines in the unpaid balances of these assets on their balance sheets. Lenders funded an estimated $20 billion of new home-equity lines of credit during the third quarter, up 17.6 percent from the previous three-month period. That compared to a 9.8 percent increase in total mortgage originations during the period, and it was the best quarterly HEL production figure in five years, according to Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. Still, the supply of home-equity loans outstanding fell...[Includes three data charts]

The nation’s subservicers, as a whole, reported a modest decline in their business volume during the third quarter, though some firms experienced large declines compared to a year ago, according to exclusive survey figures from Inside Mortgage Finance. The biggest year-over-year decline came at Bank of America, which had just $5 billion in subservicing contracts at Sept. 30, a 78.3 percent drop compared to the same period last year. BofA’s decline in the subservicing sector is...[Includes one data chart]

Complying with all of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s mortgage rules that took effect this year could actually boost a lender’s fair lending liability under certain circumstances, according to one top attorney. “There are several possibilities where a person could be in complete compliance or even engage in behaviors incentivized by these rules, while also possibly increasing fair lending risk,” said Colgate Selden, counsel at the Alston & Bird law firm, during a webinar last week sponsored by InsideMortgage Finance. “The ability-to-repay, loan originator compensation, mortgage servicing, and Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosure rules all contain provisions where persons could indirectly increase their fair lending risk through compliance with those rules.” Among the ATR-related fair lending issues discussed by Selden, a former CFPB official, are...

The OCC said two banks exited the residential mortgage business in 2014 and another two plan to exit in the coming year.

A handful of other large national wholesalers offer LPMI, including United Wholesale Mortgage.

Advocates for GSE reform looking for savings in the federal budget will be disappointed...

When settlements are first reported rarely does the money change hands right away.

A mid-sized nonbank based in Texas saw two of its top officers resign last week, industry sources confirmed to IMFnews.