New FHFA Director Mel Watt is expected to shakeup some of the senior staff at the Federal Housing Finance Agency.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, are drafting their own housing finance reform/GSE bill that likely will be superimposed over the Corker-Warner measure.

However, a year-over-year look at the data shows a much poorer performance across the board, with overall grievances up 42 percent at Dec. 31, 2013, versus year-end 2012.

Among other things, Fitch sees the compliance/cost squeeze leading to a wave of industry consolidation in the mortgage servicing industry.

In fact, the ATR rule “does not require lenders to offer any specific type of mortgage,” the guide says. “Lenders can offer any mortgage they believe a consumer has the ability to repay, as long as they have documentation to back up their assessment.”

The FHA reviewed 6,692 government-insured loans between July 1 and Sept. 30, 70 percent of which were home-purchase loans.

A spokesman for WJB told IMF that the lender/servicer may send out an additional 2,000 data breach notifications, pending the results of a computer forensic review.

The former House Democrat has already halted – for now – certain DeMarco-era directives, including the FHFA’s December announcement of a 10-basis point guaranty fee increase.

Your father’s mortgage lending industry is about to be unofficially laid to rest at the end of the week. Four significant rules from the CFPB set to kick in on Friday, Jan. 10, seem poised to forever change the mortgage lending and servicing landscape. The rule that has gotten far and away the most negative publicity is the bureau’s new ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rule, which creates two versions of a QM loan – a ‘safe harbor’ QM and a ‘rebuttable presumption’ QM – as well as a 3 percent points-and-fees cap. The rule also features...

Consumer complaints submitted to the CFPB continued moving somewhat erratically on a quarterly basis, generally dropping in the aggregate by 15.0 percent during the fourth quarter, led by a 33.3 percent fall in mortgage gripes, according to a new analysis of bureau data by Inside the CFPB. Also, grievances with consumers’ credit card experiences fell 17.6 percent for the period, followed by credit reports, off 17.5 percent; consumer loans, down 13.1 percent; and bank accounts, which declined by 12.5 percent. (INCLUDES TWO CHARTS)...