Penalties in legislation that would restrict the use of eminent domain to resolve foreclosure problems could cripple state and local governments financially and provide no relief to property owners, warned the bill’s critics. H.R. 1944, the Private Rights Protection Act, would prohibit city and county governments that get federal funding for economic development from using their eminent domain powers to seize underwater mortgage notes from investors and unilaterally restructure the loans before selling them to other investors. Violators would be ineligible for federal economic development funds for two fiscal years following a court’s finding of guilt. The bill also provides the attorney general with broader enforcement authority. The necessity for legislation arose in the wake of efforts last year by certain municipalities in California to ...
The Chinese Year of the Horse welcomed the FHA with a hard kick in the head as total originations fell 20 percent in January from December 2013. Even as rising interest rates slowed refinancing activity last year, the expected increase in purchase-mortgage lending barely materialized and, in fact, appears to be dropping off. Lenders reported $8.7 billion in new originations in January, down from $10.9 billion in December and $23.7 billion from a year ago. Most were fixed-rate mortgages and 77.1 percent were purchase transactions. Three of the top five FHA lenders – Quicken Loans, JPMorgan Chase and LoanDepot – reported purchase origination totals below 40 percent. Top-ranked Wells Fargo and Bank of America each reported 64.0 percent of total FHA originations as purchase transactions. Wells Fargo closed the month with $519.0 million despite a ... [2 charts]
A spokeswoman for the FHFA declined to provide any guidance on when a CEO or chairman might be named for the CSP. She noted: “The common securitization platform project is still in development,” adding that “We have neither final plans nor specific budgets at this time.”
Last week, Lawsky noted that Nationstar’s portfolio more than doubled between the end of 2012 and the end of 2013. He asked the nonbank servicer to provide the number of full timers in each unit as well as the number of loans per employee.
The more detailed 'needs-to-improve' list includes Bank of America, CitiMortgage, Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Loan Servicing, Select Portfolio Servicing and Wells Fargo.
The Democrat and Republican heads of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee this week finally announced an agreement on comprehensive housing finance reform legislation but the release of a detailed bill for public consumption remains forthcoming. For now, it’s impossible to tell how the agreement reached by Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, is any different than the bipartisan bill introduced early last year by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, and Mark Warner, D-VA. Johnson and Crapo are expected to release draft legislative language later this week, and move to a markup “in the coming weeks.” Like Corker-Warner, the Johnson-Crapo agreement includes...
By itself, BofA accounted for 79.3 percent of the $606.3 billion shrinkage in commercial bank MSR portfolios during 2013. Where did all that servicing go to?
The Department of Labor has asked the Supreme Court of the United States to review an appeals court ruling that put the kibosh on the agency’s policy that mortgage loan officers do not qualify under the administrative exemption to overtime pay. The legal question presented in Thomas E. Perez, Secretary of Labor, et al., petitioners, v. Mortgage Bankers Association, et al., is whether a federal agency must engage in notice-and-comment rulemaking before it can significantly alter an interpretation of an agency regulation. Last October, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia refused...
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