Appraisals aren’t causing significant closing problems for purchase-mortgage lending, although there are issues as home prices increase, according to responses to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. “Appraisals are mostly in line with contract prices,” said Tom Popik, research director for Campbell Surveys. “However, appraisals for FHA mortgages and VA mortgages more often miss the contract price than appraisals for conventional mortgages.” Appraised home prices have tended...

With the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau declining to provide any more formal guidance on legal liability for secondary market players when originators make errors in TRID mortgage disclosures, a group of due diligence firms is moving ahead with their own clarifications. High-level sources familiar with the matter, and who spoke to Inside MBS & ABS under the condition of anonymity, said the forthcoming clarifications have been vetted by legal counsel and are almost ready for viewing. Several top third-party review/due diligence firms are involved in the effort, including Clayton Holdings and Opus. All the major rating agencies are involved as well. “We’re working to calibrate our methodology, to bring it in line with the spirit of the CFPB letter,” said ...

The pessimistic pricing in the secondary market for jumbo mortgage-backed securities with exposure to the oil industry might be unwarranted, according to Standard & Poor’s. The rating service completed a stress test on the 59 jumbo MBS issued in 2012 and beyond. “Assuming the entire oil-sector workforce in three major oil-producing states defaults on their mortgages, even under extreme economic stress, the incremental collateral pool losses ... [Includes three briefs]

A clause in a New York home-purchase contract excluding government-backed financing from seller consideration is raising potential disparate impact concerns. A residential-lending manager in Sarasota, FL, emailed Inside FHA/VA Lending a copy of the contract with the controversial language embedded in Section 8 under the heading “Mortgage Commitment Contingency.” The paragraph read in part, “… institutional lender agrees to make a first loan other than a VA, FHA or other governmentally insured loan, to purchaser …”. “The language makes clear that no government-backed loans such as VA, FHA or USDA are acceptable to the seller [of the property],” the lender, who requested anonymity, said. “It is pretty rampant as cash is king and no one on the selling side wants to wait for payment.” Apparently, such clauses are nothing new. In fact, they have been around for ...

Many small and medium-sized nonbanks have been earning steady profits the past three years, but some firms lost money in the fourth quarter of 2015, thanks to the CFPB’s integrated disclosure rule known as TRID. At least that’s what some warehouse managers told IMFnews, an affiliated publication. These credit executives, who spoke on the condition their names not be used, were somewhat surprised by the development, noting that about a third of their clients posted losses. The managers also noted that executives at companies experiencing the losses almost unanimously blamed it on the TRID rule, citing compliance costs and problems selling mortgages in the secondary market, particularly jumbo and nonconforming products. At this time, there seems to be no major ...

Roughly 25 percent of lenders responding to an American Bankers Association survey have eliminated some mortgage products because the TRID integrated disclosure rule does not provide enough clarity. The offerings that were killed include construction loans, adjustable-rate mortgages, home equity loans and payment-frequency options. Further, more than 75 percent of survey respondents said that TRID is delaying loan closings by, on average, eight days, the trade group said. However, some transactions have experienced as many as 20 extra days. Additionally, a whopping 93 percent claim uploading and loan processing times have increased as a result of TRID implementation. Approximately one quarter of respondents said the new rule has increased the total cost to the consumer to obtain a loan, the ...

The CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule with its qualified mortgage standard has not dampened mortgage credit availability – market dynamics did that before the rule kicked in, according to a new analysis from the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. “The second anniversary of the QM rule is an appropriate occasion to evaluate the rule’s impact on credit availability,” Research Associate Bing Bai, Director Laurie Goodman and Senior Fellow Ellen Seidman wrote in a brief published late last month. The data they reviewed suggest that the impact of QM has been small: mortgages with interest-only features and prepayment penalties were virtually extinct before QM took effect; the adjustable-rate mortgage share of the market still tracks interest rate changes; and the share of loans ...

Before the CFPB’s new Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rules kick in, now would be a great time for the mortgage industry to take steps to improve the HMDA process, according to Kathleen Blanchard, president of Key Compliance Services. “As another HMDA season draws to a close, take some time to consider the HMDA process and how to make it better,” she advised in a recent online blog. “The HMDA Loan Application Register is an important document that is very labor intensive, with monetary penalties attached for inaccuracies. Take a project management approach and create a strong process to get it right.” Blanchard said she sees financial institutions scrubbing LARs at year end, making changes to applications and loans that should ...

The Mortgage Bankers Association last week indicated it plans to press the CFPB for relief on a handful of fronts this year, most notably, the integrated disclosure rule known as TRID, the pending new reporting regime under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and the broader “regulation by enforcement” approach the bureau seems to have taken. “Since the TRID rule’s implementation, a significant number of issues have emerged – mostly due to lingering misperceptions, differing interpretations, and technical ambiguities in the regulation,” the trade group said during a recent press briefing about its priorities for 2016. “It also has become clear that, while the vast majority of lenders were educated about the rule, many other important actors in the real estate transaction ...

The CFPB took two separate actions against Citibank last week for alleged illegal debt sales and debt collection practices. In its first action, the CFPB ordered Citibank to cough up nearly $5 million in consumer relief and pay a $3 million penalty for allegedly selling credit card debt with inflated interest rates and for failing to forward consumer payments promptly to debt buyers. The second action was taken against both Citibank and two debt collection law firms it used that allegedly falsified court documents filed in debt collection cases in New Jersey state courts. The CFPB ordered Citibank and the law firms to comply with a court order that Citibank refund $11 million to consumers and forgo collecting about $34 million ...