In what may be a first, an individual borrower who received compensation under the terms of the consent order the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau brought against Castle & Cooke Mortgage late last year has since filed a class-action lawsuit. The litigation was brought on the basis of the same alleged violations of the Truth in Lending Act, the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act and state law as were documented in the bureau’s enforcement action. Homeowner Luis Cabrales, on behalf of himself and “all others similarly situated,” recently filed...
Even though the origination volume of non-agency, non-jumbo mortgages is relatively small, private equity firms increasingly are eyeing the space, believing that within two years – or maybe sooner – the business could be producing robust profits. In short, investors want to enter non-agency lending before anyone else does – and at “ground level” prices. According to non-prime executives and investment advisors, private-equity funds of varying sizes want...
The new nonbank task force includes representatives from nine state regulators, including the New York Department of Financial Services where Benjamin Lawsky is the superintendent.
The mortgage credit box contracted quickly as the housing market slid toward disaster in 2007, but it’s proving to be much more difficult to stretch it back to what used to be considered normal. The subtitle to this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association could well have been “access to credit,” an idea that clearly dominated the conversation. Despite the recent unexpected drop in mortgage interest rates, most observers expect origination volume in 2015 to track closely to this year’s sluggish level and part of the problem is relatively weak home-purchase lending. Industry people are...
An Iowa-based investor in government-sponsored enterprise common stock this week asked a federal court in the Hawkeye State to give “no weight” to a ruling earlier this month by a Washington, DC, federal judge who dismissed litigation against the government by other GSE shareholders, including Perry Capital and Fairholme Funds. Continental Western Insurance Co. filed papers in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa Central Division arguing that Judge Royce Lamberth was “simply wrong” in his interpretation of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and his HERA-based rationale to shut down shareholders’ suits in DC. An investor in GSE stock, Continental’s counsel in the case is...
If Republicans take control of the U.S. Senate in the upcoming elections, Congress next year may actually produce some mortgage-related legislation, according to political analysts participating on a panel at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention in Las Vegas this week. Any successful legislation will be narrowly targeted and not address complex problems like building a new mortgage finance system or resolving the status of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, analysts agreed. Over the last four years, the Democrats’ top priority has been preserving...
Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt this week unveiled two significant policy changes aimed at opening up the mortgage credit box: additional buyback relief for originators that sell loans to the government-sponsored enterprises and a return to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac purchases of mortgages with loan-to-value ratios between 95 percent and 97 percent. Speaking at the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association in Las Vegas, Watt gave some concrete details about the new “life of loan” representation and warranty relief and outlined a number of other changes in the works. Moreover, industry officials contend...
RSS