Mortgage lenders are still smarting from a recent cyber-attack on their loan origination software provider, Ellie Mae, but a larger question now looms: If a company of Ellie’s stature was hacked, can it happen to other vendors as well? Tony Garritano, a consultant who manages a mortgage technology advocacy group called Progress in Lending, said, to the best of his knowledge, the attack on Ellie Mae is a first for the industry – and likely not the last. “As more lenders and their vendors migrate to the Internet this will happen again and again,” he said. He notes...
It will be difficult to tell whether the Dodd-Frank Act is driving waves of small lenders out of the mortgage market or whether a severe drought in new production is an equally weighty factor, but community lenders may be gaining some ground among policymakers. At a hearing in the House Financial Services Committee this week, Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, read at some length from a letter he received from a small mortgage banker in central Texas who said his firm is being forced out of the market because of the cost and complexity of regulatory compliance. The major culprit is the wave of mortgage regulations imposed by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau under the Dodd-Frank Act. Hensarling did not reveal the company’s name. Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, R-WV, who chairs the Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit Subcommittee, reiterated...
Companies that have received government subpoenas for electronically stored information (ESI) in connection with federal investigations of financial fraud and other white-collar crimes might find some relief in two recent court rulings, according to a recent legal analysis. In a Dechert LLP legal update, attorneys Ben Barnett, Rebecca Kahan and Nathaniel Hopkins said heightened anti-fraud activities at the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission have resulted in increased criminal prosecutions, criminal probes and enforcement actions. Many of these actions have shown...
The price of agency MBS has been rising since early April, which can only mean good things for publicly-traded real estate investment trusts that own the asset class. However, REIT share prices haven’t improved much of late, with some companies such as Annaly Capital Management continuing to trade closer to their 52-week lows than their highs. Late this week, for instance, Annaly – one of the largest MBS investing REITs – was trading at $11.30 compared to a 52-week high of $15.98 and a low of $9.66. But better days may be...
Another suggestion is to increase the $100,000 threshold for “smaller loans” to $200,000 allowing for mortgage amounts beneath that level to be subject to more workable points-and-fees limits.
The chairman and CEO of CapWealth Advisors – a private equity firm with stakes in the GSEs – was critical of all the housing reform bills introduced so far and the premise that Fannie and Freddie need to be wound down to affect reform.
Since late last year, the FHFA has decreed that it must approve any GSE servicing sale of 25,000 loans or more, which translates into roughly $5 billion of product.
Negative spreads between a fixed-rate HECM loan and advancing future funds at a fixed rate could endanger servicers’ capacity to meet their obligations under the HECM MBS program,
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