The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced settlements last week with two mortgage lending-related entities over alleged violations of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act having to do with affiliates and fees. In one case, HUD alleged that title company Fidelity National Financial Inc., through its subsidiaries, paid fees for the referral of settlement service business in violation of Section 8 of RESPA...

Nevada. Assembly Bill 77 was recently signed into law, revising a number of provisions governing mortgage lending and the conduct and supervision of related professionals (escrow agents and agencies, mortgage bankers, brokers and agents, etc.), and providers of certain covered services... North Carolina. House Bill 312 was approved, amending the methods for recording a satisfaction of a security instrument with the register of deeds. It also clarifies the requirements for electronically registering plats with the register of deeds, and amends restrictions on access to military discharge documents recorded with the register of deeds. The majority of the bill becomes effective Oct. 1, 2011...

Office of the Comptroller of the CurrencyFederal Deposit Insurance Corp.Federal Reserve Top servicers submit remedial foreclosure plans. Top mortgage servicers Bank of America, Wells Fargo, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, Ally Financial, U.S. Bank, Sun Trust, OneWest Bank, PNC Bank, MetLife Bank, HSBC Bank, Aurora Bank, EverBank and Sovereign submitted their foreclosure practices remedial plans to the OCC, the FDIC and the Fed last week. However, some of the servicers told Inside Regulatory Strategies their plans were confidential documents and would not disclose them. An OCC official said there are no plans for the agency to release the plans or to summarize their contents...

Investors who lost money in Countrywide Financial Corp. MBS after the 2007 market collapse suffered a possible blow of hundreds of billions of dollars in a Los Angeles court case last week. After initially seeking $351 billion in a lawsuit, the case was narrowed to $2.6 billion in bonds. U.S. District Judge Marianna Pfaelzer in the Central District of California had already narrowed the case once, saying investors can only sue for their own losses, not those related to all offerings that fell under the same guidelines. This ruling reduced ...

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke this week endorsed the reduction in high-cost conforming loan limits set to be implemented in October. The Mortgage Bankers Association, meanwhile, called for an extension of the existing loan limits through the end of 2012. Major banks and other non-agency players are eagerly anticipating the decline in the top loan limit from $729,750 to $625,500. A number of banks have indicated that they are ready and willing to make non-agency jumbos. In separate testimony this week before two committees of Congress, Bernanke said lowering ...

Servicers have made little progress with three auxiliary programs to the Home Affordable Modification Program, according to newly available data. Activity remains limited in the Principal Reduction Alternative, Second Lien Modification and Home Affordable Foreclosure Alternatives programs. Last week, for the first time, the Treasury Department detailed activity in the non-agency exclusive PRA program. Between the program’s announcement in March 2010 and May 2011, some 21,299 PRA trial mods were started. The activity is relatively low compared with ... [includes one data chart]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is working on a proposed regulation that seeks to harmonize existing standards for determining when a housing practice with a discriminatory impact violates the Fair Housing Act. The proposed rule would cover the liability standards in instances in which a racially neutral housing practice has a discriminatory effect. The disparate impact theory has been used in fair housing cases to allege discriminatory activity when the terms of a business policy are neutral toward protected classes but the policy is shown to have greater impact on minorities or other protected groups. There has been debate over...

The nation’s top mortgage servicers had to submit remedial plans for their foreclosure practices this week as part of their consent agreements with federal banking regulators, after having been granted an extension from the original submission timeline. Some servicers told Inside Mortgage Finance their plans are confidential and couldn’t be released to the public. An official at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency said there are no plans for the agency to release those plans or to summarize their contents. The affected servicers are...

Experts sharply disagreed on the Federal Reserve Board’s controversial new rules on loan officer compensation during a hearing this week in the House Financial Services Committee, with some claiming it is a confused mess and others saying it’s a shield for low-income and minority borrowers. Marc Savitt, president of the Mortgage Center and testifying on behalf of the National Association of Independent Housing, said the rule caused massive job loss among small mortgage businesses and fewer consumer loan options. “As an active participant in meetings with the FRB during the comment period, it was evident the FRB was unwilling to...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is ready to take mortgage servicing by the lapels when it formally opens on July 21, according to an official testifying at a House Financial Services Committee hearing this week – calling the initiative a “priority” for the new agency that faces a heavy load of new duties and authorities. One of the flaws in the regulatory structure is the lack of federal servicing standards, said Raj Date, associate director of depositor and consumer protection at the new agency. Servicing has been a key issue in some MBS investor lawsuits, and many have ...