Comments on TRID 2.0 Are Due Tuesday. Representatives of the mortgage industry have until 11:59 p.m. ET Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016, to submit their comments to the CFPB regarding its TRID 2.0 clarifying proposed rule.... CFPB Issues Revised TRID Guide to CD, LE Forms. The CFPB recently published an updated guide to the TRID loan estimate and closing disclosure forms, which was last revised in July 2015.... Bureau Releases Updated TRID Compliance Guide for Small Entities. Earlier this month, the CFPB put out a revised small entity compliance guide for the TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule, which was last updated in July 2015....

Documents revealed to plaintiffs’ attorneys in a prominent GSE shareholder case is causing some to question what President Obama was told about Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s profitability when the Treasury sweep took place in 2012. Judge Margaret Sweeney released her 80-page opinion last week and it gave more insight into her decision. While only a short summary sentence of each of the 56 documents is available now, it does show communication between high-level officials at the Treasury Department, Federal Housing Finance Agency and the White House regarding the Treasury’s sweep of Fannie and Freddie profits.Investors Unite, a GSE shareholder group, noted that the government might have been trying to keep the documents hidden because...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency has included more details regarding how it will monitor the examinations of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in its annual performance plan for fiscal year 2017, released last week. Over the past year, the FHFA’s Office of Inspector General has blasted the regulator for not completing targeted examinations on time and inadequate follow-up on what were deemed matters requiring attention (MRAs). The new plan noted that the GSEs will continue to address MRAs by submitting remediation plans to FHFA for review. Each non-objected remediation plan will include a timeframe for completion within the fiscal year the MRA was issued or beyond. FHFA added that Fannie and Freddie management are responsible for...

The Structured Finance Industry Group is preparing to publish standards that aim to increase transparency for representations and warranties on new non-agency MBS, according to officials at the trade group. Eric Kaplan, a managing partner at Ranieri Strategies, said SFIG will release one or two “green papers” this year as part of the group’s RMBS 3.0 effort to revive issuance of non-agency MBS. Kaplan detailed the plans along with Daniel Goodwin, director of mortgage policy at SFIG, at the recent ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network. SFIG has released...

U.S. Court of Federal Claims Judge Margaret Sweeney’s ruling, released last week, raises new questions about the validity of government efforts to keep thousands of other documents secret in a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholder case over the net worth sweep imposed by the Treasury Department and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, according to shareholder advocates. In Fairholme Funds Inc. v. United States, et al, shareholders argue that the net worth sweep of the government-sponsored enterprises’ profits is unfair, and they have scored significant victories in getting access to various written communications to prove their claim. The recent batch of documents Sweeney released to the plaintiff’s attorneys show...

PHH Corp. this week scored a key legal victory in its battle with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau over captive reinsurance and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. But despite this good news, there are still clouds over the nonbank. The “worst” of the recent spate of bad news for the company surrounds the early October disclosure that Merrill Lynch is breaking all ties to PHH when it comes to private-label originations and servicing. The effective date for the end of the contract is...

The traditional interpretation of Section 8 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act that the mortgage industry has relied on for decades was vindicated this week when a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit sided with most of the arguments advanced by PHH Mortgage in its dispute with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The crux of the dispute has been the bureau’s assertion that PHH violated RESPA by steering business to private mortgage insurers that purchased reinsurance from a captive insurer owned by PHH. Most large lenders and all private MIs engaged in these arrangements prior to the housing market collapse. Early on in the case, an administrative judge agreed...

Recent data on the state of the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and program financials suggest that the annual audit will show solid improvement in the government’s 2016 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30. But there are some huge variables that could have a major impact on the final results that won’t be known until the annual audit is released late next month. The MMIF ended...

Non-agency MBS investors looked to the practices of the government-sponsored enterprises when establishing the standards for a deal agent, according to Alessandro Pagani, a portfolio manager and head of securitized assets at Loomis Sayles. “The GSEs were very effective in enforcing their rights as owners of the collateral; they had access to information and real enforcement power to put back loans that needed to be put back and direct servicers,” he said at the recent ABS East conference produced by Information Management Network. The Deal Agent Committee released...

A Manhattan district court judge last week dismissed lawsuits brought by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. against three large banks, saying the agency no longer has standing to sue after it sold the defective mortgages through a re-securitization transaction. Judge Andrew Carter of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York threw out the government’s suits against Citigroup, Bank of New York Mellon and U.S. Bancorp, which accused the banks of failing as trustees to ensure the quality of $2.7 billion in MBS purchased by the failed Texas-based Guaranty Bank. Reuters was the first to report Carter’s decision. Guaranty went...