On the heels of a final ruling this week where a federal judge said the government went too far in its takeover of American International Group as part of its 2008 bailout, some are comparing the lawsuit to the one bought by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders. In this ruling, the federal judge decided not to award damages to AIG shareholders, even as it said the government was wrong in taking a 79.9 percent stake in the company in exchange for an $85 billion loan that helped keep the company on firm ground during the downturn. Judge Thomas Wheeler believed shareholders did not need to be compensated because AIG...
If you are advertising or marketing mortgage products in Spanish, compliance experts suggest you should provide all requisite disclosures and servicing in Spanish.
There is a surprising number of smaller mortgage lenders who think they can comply with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s pending integrated-disclosure rule with a substantial amount of manual practices and processes – as opposed to technological automation – and they may well be in for a rude awakening when the new rule kicks in. According to Rod Alba, senior regulatory counsel at the American Bankers Association, approximately one quarter of ...
The outstanding supply of single-family MBS declined 0.7 percent during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS market analysis. But that didn’t stop commercial banks from continuing to increase their holdings. Banks increased their aggregate MBS holdings by 3.1 percent from the fourth quarter, pushing their share of the MBS market to 22.9 percent. The only other investor group that managed to increase its stake was the credit union industry, which posted a 1.6 percent increase from the previous quarter. The Federal Reserve finally loosened...
There was widespread expectation that the latest round of seller-friendly changes to the government-sponsored enterprises’ representation-and-warranty framework would encourage lenders to liberalize their credit overlays. So far in 2015, the data aren’t showing it. In fact, the case could be made that credit trends are going the other way. The average credit score for purchase mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac was...[Includes one data table]
A ruling late last week by the New York Court of Appeals will likely help provide certainty to non-agency MBS issuers regarding liability from breaches of representations and warranties while limiting claims from investors. The appeals court confirmed a lower court’s ruling in ACE Securities v. DB Structured Products, determining that the statute of limitations for claims of breaches of representations and warranties starts when a deal is closed – not when a potential breach is discovered. “Representations and warranties concern...
Most participants on the Federal Open Market Committee anticipate an increase in interest rates sometime later this year, and not delaying until 2016, the FOMC indicated after its two-day meeting concluded Wednesday afternoon. Meanwhile, the Fed’s support of the housing market through reinvesting in MBS continues as it has, with no change in the U.S. central bank’s thinking when it comes to the management of its balance sheet. “The committee reaffirmed...