Harbour Portfolio Advisors of Dallas, one of the largest providers of seller-financed homes in the U.S., must comply with a civil investigative demand from the CFPB for documents and other information, according to a recent ruling by Judge Nancy Edmunds of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, in Detroit. The main issue here, according to the respondents in the case, is whether the bureau’s investigative authority extends to their selling, marketing and servicing of a financial product called an agreement for deed (AFD), otherwise known as a “contract for deed” or a “land installment contract.” An AFD is a written agreement to purchase residential property, whereby the seller agrees to deliver a deed to the purchaser ...
If federal policymakers do away with the CFPB’s mortgage rules without proper replacements, the credit quality of residential mortgage-backed securities could be compromised, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service said in a recent report. The analysts were providing a review of President Trump’s recent executive order related to the Dodd-Frank Act. “Any significant repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act’s mortgage-related provisions without effective alternatives would weaken residential RMBS credit quality because these provisions have strengthened the credit quality of mortgage originations, improved servicing practices and bolstered the credit integrity of RMBS structures,” the analysts said. The report is significant because it flies in the face of the traditional industry narrative that the bureau’s mortgage rules have been nothing but an onerous burden ...
In a competitive mortgage market with increasingly knowledgeable and demanding borrowers, it is essential that originators implement proper processes and controls to produce accurate property tax data collection, analysis and estimation, according to an online blog posting by Dominique Lalisse, an analyst with CoreLogic. One of the critical components of the new loan origination process that has emerged under the CFPB’s Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act integrated disclosure rule is property- tax amount estimation for residential properties, she pointed out. “The estimating process is conducted during the initial stages of origination in order to complete the required loan estimate (LE) provided to the borrower,” Lalisse said. “With increased scrutiny around the preparation of the LE, lenders must ...
Two years after first proposing a regulation addressing mortgage servicing rights transfers, the Maryland Commissioner of Financial Regulation recently issued a revised iteration that could have a big effect on the mortgage servicing industry, according to attorneys with the Ballard Spahr law firm. According to a summary by the attorneys of the technical language of the proposed regulation, for any transfer of MSR involving at least 7,500 loans, the transferee servicer would have to report certain information to the commissioner at least 30 days before date of the transfer. Specifically, the transferee servicer would have to “report whether the transfer involves a subservicing agreement or an agreement for the sale of mortgage servicing rights; the names of the parties to ...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development is apparently poised to begin an investigation of allegations of redlining on the part of CIT Group, Pasadena, CA, through its CIT Bank subsidiary, the successor to OneWest Bank, after agreeing to accept a complaint against the lender filed by the California Reinvestment Coalition. The CRC alleges the bank violated and continues to violate the Fair Housing Act by providing residential real estate-related transactions in a manner that discriminates on the basis of race, color and national origin. Specifically, the complaint alleges that since at least 2011, CIT Bank discriminated in marketing and originating housing-related products, as evidenced by the low number of mortgages it made to African-American, Asian-American and Latino borrowers in ...
The CFPB recently issued a request for information into ways to expand access to credit for consumers who are “credit invisible,” that is, those who don’t have enough credit history to generate a credit score. The bureau issued the RFI to drum up public feedback on “the benefits and risks of tapping alternative data sources such as bills for mobile phones and rent payments to make lending decisions about consumers whose lack of credit history might otherwise block opportunities.” According to the CFPB, there are 26 million Americans who are credit invisibles. “Another 19 million consumers have a credit history that has gone stale, or is insufficient to produce a credit score under most scoring models,” said the agency. The ...
Another Trump Executive Order Targets Regulatory Red Tape. Late last week, President Trump signed another executive order focused on government regulations – this one requiring every agency to establish a regulatory reform task force to eliminate red tape. ... ABA Offers CFPB Some Suggestions to Protect Shared Consumer Data. The American Bankers Association recently had some advice for the CFPB for protecting consumers’ financial information that is being voluntarily shared with third-party data aggregators....
With Republicans now in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, Hensarling plans to make even more cuts to regulations for rating services.