AARP has filed a class action lawsuit against Wells Fargo Bank and Fannie Mae in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in San Francisco on behalf of reverse mortgage borrowers and their survivors in what it says is an attempt to head off illegal Home Equity Conversion Mortgage foreclosures and evictions.
A conservative, non-partisan public interest group is considering its options following a recent federal appeals court decision affirming the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s right to withhold documentation revealing the extent of political campaign donations made by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.On Aug. 5, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia upheld a lower court ruling against Judicial Watch.
A group of House Democrats wants the Obama administration to extend the forbearance period up to a year for unemployed homeowners with mortgages owned by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.
A report issued late last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General has concluded that the FHFA did nothing to subvert its role as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s regulator when the agency negotiated the GSEs’ administrative responsibilities under the Treasury Department’s Home Affordable Modification Program.However, the FHFA-OIG noted there was ample room for improvement in the Finance Agency’s oversight of the GSEs’ financial agency agreement (FAA) with Treasury, which resulted in poor communication and differing expectations as to the payment and scope of the HAMP-related work that the GSEs performed.
Department of Housing and Urban Development Loan limit guidance. The Department of Housing and Urban Development plans to release guidance by the end of August that will detail which loans are eligible for the higher conforming loan limits, along with additional requirements for using the higher loan limits, according to Inside FHA Lending, an affiliated publication. …
The Department of Housing and Urban Development has launched a new web-based mapping tool displaying the location of all foreclosed properties being held by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA, which is almost half of all real estate-owned or REO properties in the U.S. HUD said its REO Portal is intended to help local communities, homebuyers and responsible investors to acquire these properties and accelerate efforts to stabilize local housing markets. …
Policymakers interested in pushing national mortgage servicing standards are right to make sure that homeowners who were harmed by abusive industry practices are compensated. However, there is still a tremendous amount of uncertainty in the housing and housing finance markets, and any servicing standards that are developed must address that if the weights that hold the markets back are to be cut lose and private capital comes back in full force, a top industry…
The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving rapidly along with its integrated mortgage disclosure project, issuing a third iteration of disclosure prototypes and closing off the comment period on them in just the past two weeks since the last issue of Inside Regulatory Strategies went to press. This time around, the CFPB issued another pair of disclosures, named “Camellia” and “Azalea,” which would be used for mortgages with a balloon payment at the…
One of the most important issues for mortgage lenders and homebuyers alike in the whole qualified mortgage/risk-retention/ability-to-repay debate is how much legal liability lenders will have over the mortgages they originate in the Dodd-Frank era. For policymakers, one of the biggest decisions they will have to make to bring certainty to that question is which legal standard to impose, a “rebuttable presumption” or a “safe harbor.” …
Small FHA-approved lenders no longer have to submit audited financial statements to the Department of Housing and Urban Development in order to be approved or renewed for FHA programs, according to new guidelines issued July 28. Under Mortgagee Letter 2011-25, small supervised lenders regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., National Credit Union Administration or the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency are exempt from current regulation requiring all FHA lenders to submit annual audited financial statements as a condition for their approval or continued participation in FHA programs. Currently, the regulation applies to...
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