The timing of any hike in interest rates from the U.S. central bank has grown more uncertain in recent weeks, amid signs of significantly slower economic growth – a reality that was reflected in the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee reaffirming the status quo after its two-day meeting in Washington, DC, concluded mid-week. Hours before the FOMC’s statement was released, the Commerce Department announced that first-quarter gross domestic product slowed to a crawl of just 0.2 percent, compared with a 2.2 percent increase in the fourth quarter. “Information received since the FOMC met in March suggests...

The Treasury Department is making progress corralling various participants in the non-agency mortgage-backed security market, slowly prompting changes aimed at attracting large investors. The effort started nearly a year ago, when Michael Stegman, counselor to the Treasury on housing finance policy, first proposed the issuance of a benchmark transaction in November. “The benchmark transaction process has reset relationships among transaction parties and is ...

Republican leaders in the Senate and the House plan to press ahead with legislation to provide regulatory relief for mortgage lenders, especially for small community banks. It’s likely that provisions to automatically designate mortgages held in portfolio as qualified mortgages will be included in a legislative package the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee will mark up sometime in the middle of May. And Republicans might use...

Non-mortgage ABS production jumped sharply higher in the first quarter of 2015, with $50.08 billion of new issuance, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis and ranking. First-quarter issuance was up 38.1 percent from the previous three-month period, although early 2015 was down 6.3 percent from a year ago. The two strongest segments of the market were vehicle finance ABS, which accounted for 46.7 percent of issuance during the first quarter, and business loan ABS, which chipped in another 30.9 percent of new production. Ford Motor Credit had...[Includes three data charts]

Two new reports from Fitch Ratings, taken together, indicate a modest weakening in the collateral backing U.S. auto ABS deals is continuing, with perhaps a temporary reprieve thanks to short-term cash flow positives for consumers, mostly tax refunds and lower gasoline prices. Still, the overall outlook is positive. U.S. prime auto ABS collateral has been marginally weakening in the last few years, most recently because of amped-up competition among auto finance companies, Fitch said in a report out this week, based on transactions issued between 2007 and fourth-quarter 2014. “The quality of prime auto loan securitized pools was...

A final rule issued this week by federal regulators setting standards for oversight of appraisal management companies goes against the concerns raised by many industry participants. The rule implements standards required by the Dodd-Frank Act, among other issues. The Consumer Mortgage Coalition, the National Association of Appraisal Management Companies and other industry participants had raised concerns about the rule proposed in April 2014. The proposal established minimum standards for AMCs – which are intermediaries between appraisers and lenders – and allowed states to establish requirements that go beyond the minimum standards. The final rule adopts...

Days after the full House of Representatives passed legislation that would amend the points-and-fees calculation in the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule, the bill ran into some sudden resistance on the other side of Capitol Hill. H.R. 685, the Mortgage Choice Act, is a bipartisan bill that would clarify that certain affiliated title costs do not count against the “qualified mortgage” 3 percent cap on points and fees under the bureau’s ATR rule. H.R. 685, introduced by Rep. Bill Huizenga, R-MI, with dozens of co-sponsors from both parties, would exclude from the definition of points and fees all title charges, regardless of whether they are charged by an affiliated company, provided they are bona fide and reasonable. Lawmakers in the House passed ...

The odds that the CFPB will publicly announce or tacitly concede some degree of soft enforcement of its integrated disclosure rule, known as TRID, may have improved recently when two Republican Congressmen called on the bureau to give the mortgage industry such a break when the rule kicks in Aug. 1, 2015. “We strongly encourage you to make the August 1, 2015, to December 31, 2015, timeframe a ‘hold harmless’ period of restrained enforcement and liability,” said Reps. Blaine Luetkemeyer, R-MO, and Randy Neugebauer, R-TX, in a letter recently sent to CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “This would allow all parties to better understand the changes associated with TRID and help ensure consumer confidence and stability in the nation's housing market,” ...

As the result of a lawsuit it filed late last month, the CFPB has obtained a preliminary injunction against what it characterized as the ringleaders of a “robo-call” phantom debt-collection operation, their companies and their service providers. According to the CFPB, the debt collectors, using various aliases, allegedly deployed automated calls to manipulate consumers in attempts to collect debt the consumers did not owe to them, and in most instances, to anyone else. The bureau alleges that the scheme depended on the participation of the telemarketing company that sent the robo-calls and payment processors that allowed the collectors to access consumers’ bank accounts. Named in the suit are New York resident Marcus Brown and Georgia resident Mohan Bagga, as well ...

The CFPB doesn’t have enough power as currently authorized under the Dodd-Frank Act and should be given oversight over auto dealers, according to the “mother” of the bureau, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA. “The consumer agency’s early results have been good for consumers and good for the economy as a whole, but there’s more to be done,” Warren said in a speech last week. “Right now, the auto loan market looks increasingly like the pre-crisis housing market, with good actors and bad actors mixed together.” As the senator sees it, the market is now “thick with loose underwriting standards, predatory and discriminatory lending practices,” and increasing repossessions. She then cited one study that estimated that these kinds of auto dealer markups ...