Search engine giant Google recently launched a new mortgage comparison tool that allows borrowers and lenders to search for the lowest rates, a development that will be carefully watched for the simple reason that, well, it’s Google. The mortgage tool is a part of Google Compare, a service that allows consumers to compare options for various products, such as credit cards and auto insurance. Though the effort is branded with Google’s name, the company has teamed up with Zillow and LendingTree to introduce this service. Compare allows...

The mortgage industry has notched one modest victory on Capitol Hill and continues to hope for more as lawmakers try to wrap up a spending bill for the government’s 2016 fiscal year. The victory is a new process for banks and others to petition the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to designate an area as “rural” or underserved for the purposes of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule. More flexible mortgage products, such as balloon loans, are permitted in such markets. The change was included...

Comments last week by a high-ranking official at the Treasury Department suggested that the Treasury was working toward making servicing standards in the Home Affordable Modification Program permanent. However, a source with knowledge of the Treasury’s efforts suggested that any continuation of HAMP servicing standards would be voluntary. Treasury Counselor Antonio Weiss said the Treasury has recently held several conversations with stakeholders to find common ground to continue the standardization and transparency that HAMP has brought to mortgage servicing. “Chief among these reforms are...

Morningstar Credit Ratings proposed new criteria this week to rate residential MBS. The rating service published similar criteria in May but Morningstar has only rated one deal backed by new residential mortgages since then. The biggest addition in the proposed criteria details how Morningstar plans to handle transactions that include primary mortgage insurance. The provision could help Morningstar rate risk-sharing transactions from the government-sponsored enterprises. The rating service said...

An increase in interest rates by the Federal Reserve is likely to be accompanied by a change to a Fed program that could have a significant impact on investors’ cost to finance purchases of MBS, according to industry analysts. The Fed could increase interest rates as soon as Dec. 16. In a report released this week, analysts at Deutsche Bank Securities noted that Fed officials have discussed removing a cap on the Fed’s overnight reverse-repurchase program when interest rates increase. “That program will almost surely put...

Some market analysts see an investment opportunity brewing in subprime auto ABS in the coming year, despite increasing regulatory attention. But certain rating analysts are emphasizing the rising losses the sector has been seeing for the last few months, and a few contrarians think the market is either poised to enter bubble territory or is already there. Consumer ABS analysts at Wells Fargo Securities are recommending subprime auto subordinated bonds rated BBB, convinced they offer good value on a risk-adjusted basis. With spreads set to finish 2015 at historically wide levels (excluding the financial crisis), the analysts expect...

Warehouse banks ended the third quarter with $46.0 billion of commitments on their books, a 4.2 percent sequential decline as residential originations in the primary market slowed and nonbank customers needed less credit. According to survey figures compiled by Inside Mortgage Finance, warehouse commitments at the end of September were up 27.8 percent from the same point in 2014. The quarterly decline was...

Wells Fargo is reportedly under investigation for a practice that banks across the industry have relied on for years: cross-selling financial products to their customers. Big banks have been particularly upfront about how they see jumbo mortgages originated for portfolio as a way to cross-sell other products. Cross-selling financial products occurred without much regulatory scrutiny until a lawsuit by the Los Angeles City Attorney in May. LA City Attorney Mike Feuer alleged that Wells’ cross-selling activities violated California’s unfair competition law. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco are also reportedly investigating Wells’ cross-selling. Feuer alleged...

It may just be a matter of time before CFPB Director Richard Cordray accuses the mortgage industry of “crying wolf” again, this time over inflated warnings about the damage to the housing markets the industry said would result from the bureau’s much-ballyhooed integrated disclosure rule. The CFPB’s Truth in Lending Act/Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act Integrated Disclosure rule kicked in Oct. 3, 2015. And even though some industry vendors were scrambling to deliver software updates into the evening the night before, it looks like the rule has had little immediate effect on the markets, according to the results of the latest HousingPulse survey sponsored by Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated publication, along with Campbell Surveys, which performed the survey. “While ...

The U.S. House of Representatives voted 255 to 174 recently to expand the CFPB’s qualified mortgage safe harbor to include all residential mortgages held in the originating lender’s portfolio. Similar legislative language exists in S. 1484, the Financial Regulatory Improvement Act of 2015, the regulatory relief bill pushed by Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee Chairman Richard Shelby, R-AL, which is going to be incorporated into appropriations legislation shortly. The big questions now are whether those QM provisions will remain attached to the next spending bill as it moves through the nation’s legislature, and if so, whether congressional Republicans can again succeed in using the appropriations process to bypass Democrat opposition. Now the bad news: The White House has ...