A new survey from ING DIRECT has found that 56 percent of homebuyers do not use the Good Faith Estimate as it was intended - to shop around and compare mortgage offers to get the best possible deal...

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Two Leadership Hires Made. Harvard University Professor of Economics Sendhil Mullainathan has been hired to serve as assistant director for research at the CFPB...

There is "not even a whiff of a hint of a compromise" between Congressional Republicans and President Obama and his fellow Democrats in Congress over the possible appointment of Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren to be director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, according to some industry insiders...

Congressional Republicans are doing just about everything they can- short of calling on U.S. Navy SEAL Team 6 - to weaken, throttle, starve or deep-six the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau before it gets up to full speed...

A handful of Congressional Democrats aren't letting the prospect that legislation they are sponsoring may go nowhere in committee keep them from trying to toughen the terms of the regulatory debate over national servicer standards...

The U.S. Supreme Court last week called upon the Solicitor General for advice on whether the high court should review a case involving allegations that Quicken Loans obtained unearned "loan discount fees" in some mortgage loan transactions in Louisiana, contrary to Section 8(b) of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act...

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., as the receiver of Washington Mutual, earlier this month sued Lender Processing Services of Jacksonville, FL, and CoreLogic of Santa Ana, CA, and their corporate parents and affiliates for a combined $283.5 million, alleging gross negligence and breach of contract related to appraisals performed for hundreds of the defunct lender's mortgages between 2006 and 2008...

Industry attorneys are warning FHA lenders and other users of federal funding to carefully screen loans they originate, or risk a government lawsuit for violation of the False Claims Act. First enacted during the Civil War against government contractors gouging the Union Army, the FCA has expanded beyond defense contractors and health care providers and is now being used aggressively to challenge improper FHA lending practices, according to panelists on a recent webinar hosted by the Washington law firm BuckleySandler. With government insurance increasingly on the hook, federal enforcement along the lines of the recent Department of Justice lawsuit against ...

Accounting for the FHAs single-family mortgage insurance program using the current methodology spelled out in the Federal Credit Reform Act or an alternative fair value approach will yield opposing results that could mean "savings" or potentially significant losses for the government and taxpayers, according to the Congressional Budget Office. In a recent study, the CBO estimated that, using the FCRA methodology, the FHA program would produce budgetary savings of $4.4 billion in fiscal year 2012. In contrast, a fair-value approach would result in ...

Consumer advocates called on Congress to extend national mortgage servicing standards to all servicers, including those of government-insured home loans. Testifying before the Senate Banking Subcommittee on Housing, Transportation and Community Development recently, Diane Thompson, of counsel to the National Consumer Law Center, said loans made by the FHA, the VA and the Rural Housing Services are generally aimed at ...