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...

Contributing Treasury’s warrants for common stock of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the affordable housing funds is one of the ways that the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights says the GSEs can help earmark financial resources toward affordable housing. In a June report published by the Leadership Conference, the organization offered a few of its housing finance recommendations to support affordable housing goals. The report noted that often lost in public discussion of the GSE conservatorships is the fact that the Treasury owns warrants for 79.9 percent of the common stock of both Fannie and Freddie. “The value of the warrants could easily exceed $100 billion,” the group said in its recommendation.

Despite having more than 21 months to admire its new integrated disclosure rule before it went into effect, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week found an “administrative error” that would require a two-week delay for the scheduled Aug. 1 launch date. The agency decided to add another six weeks to the delay, making the new effective date Oct. 1, 2015. The CFPB said the additional time is to “accommodate the interests of many consumers and providers whose families will be busy with the transition to the new school year.” What about getting ready...

The outstanding supply of home mortgage debt – even what had been the fastest-growing sector of the market – ebbed in the first quarter of 2015. The Federal Reserve late last week reported the supply of home mortgage debt outstanding fell to $9.855 trillion as of the end of March. That was down 0.3 percent from December 2014 and reversed a modest expansion of the servicing market over the second half of last year. While banks, thrifts and credit unions managed...[Includes two data tables]

The only thing that kept the qualified-mortgage rule from devastating mortgage production was the temporary loophole that allows Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the government-insurance programs to treat loans with debt-to-income ratios above 43 percent as QMs, an industry official said. “Many have referred to QM as the Y2K moment for mortgages: nothing happened. We all thought this thing was going to implode. And yet there wasn’t too much of a glitch,” said Rod Alba, senior regulatory counsel at the American Bankers Association, during the ABA’s annual regulatory compliance conference in Washington, DC, this week. “At the macro level, that’s...

Federal financial institution regulators have approved a long-anticipated final rule that revises mandatory flood-insurance and escrow requirements as well as force-placed provisions. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. board of directors adopted the final rule unanimously. It combines two proposed rules issued in 2013 and 2014 that would implement certain provisions in the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012 and subsequent changes made by the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act of 2014 (HFIAA). Biggert-Waters exempts...

A California superior court last week ruled that Gov. Jerry Brown, D, illegally diverted more than $331 million from a landmark mortgage settlement fund to resolve a state budget deficit. The funds represented California’s share in the historic 2012 national mortgage settlement between federal enforcement agencies and 49 state attorneys general and the nation’s five largest mortgage servicers – Wells Fargo Bank, Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Ally Financial. The banks paid...

The CFPB took an ominous administrative action against PHH Corp. earlier this month over its captive reinsurance activities. Industry critics cried foul and warned of a potentially ominous legal precedent that threatens long-standing legal interpretations that have shaped the mortgage lending landscape for years.“The CFPB is trying to rewrite the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act retroactively. It is stunning,” said one long-time industry lobbyist. “If the CFPB can illegally rewrite RESPA, they can attempt to rewrite TILA and other laws they choose.” The crux of the dispute is the bureau’s assertion that PHH violated RESPA by illegally referring borrowers to mortgage insurance companies in exchange for kickbacks.Back in January 2014, the CFPB initiated an administrative proceeding against PHH ...

RPM Mortgage of Alamo, CA, recently agreed to pay the CFPB $19 million to settle allegations that it incentivized loan officers to steer borrowers into higher cost mortgages by “illegally” paying bonuses to them. Overall, RPM wound up paying “millions of dollars” in such bonuses, the CFPB said. (In 2011, the bureau banned such incentive payments under its loan originator compensation rule.) According to a civil complaint filed in Federal District Court for the Northern District of California, the privately held nonbank allowed LOs to use expense accounts to pay for pricing incentives to close the loans. “From April 2011 through December 2013, RPM allowed loan originators to use their expense accounts to finance thousands of pricing concessions that enabled ...

The CFPB earlier this month ordered Guarantee Mortgage Corp., an independently owned mortgage-brokerage firm and mortgage banker headquartered in San Rafael, CA, to pay a civil money penalty of $228,000 for allegedly violating the agency’s loan originator compensation rule. According to the notice of charges, the nonbank – which is in the process of liquidating – paid its LOs, in part, based on the interest rate of the loans they were bringing in. The payments took place between April 2011 and August 2012, the bureau said. The consumer regulator said the “compensation was funded by payments Guarantee made to marketing services entities owned in part by the company’s branch managers and other Guarantee loan originators.” During the relevant period, Guarantee Mortgage paid ...