Brian Montgomery, President Trump’s nominee for assistant secretary for housing and FHA commissioner, reiterated his commitment to fight fraud and misrepresentation in FHA lending but wondered whether the Department of Justice had gone too far in using the False Claims Act as an enforcement tool against lenders. Testifying during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Montgomery expressed concern whether the DOJ and the Department of Housing and Urban Development had been adversarial towards lenders in their efforts to stem taxpayer losses and protect the FHA insurance fund. In prepared testimony, the nominee said the government must do better in providing clarity to encourage lenders to make FHA-insured loans and entice those that have exited for fear of exposure and liability to return to the ...

Overall denial rates for nonconventional loan applications (FHA, VA and Rural Housing Service) fell slightly in 2016 to 13.4 percent from 13.9 percent in 2015, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data showed. In the nonconventional refinancing segment, denial rates rose to 32.9 percent last year from 30.3 percent in the previous year. Approximately 23.9 percent of FHA loan applicants were denied last year while VA turned down 20.0 percent of borrowers who sought a VA loan. An estimated 14.3 percent of FHA purchase-loan applicants were turned down. VA denied 11.4 percent of its purchase-mortgage applicants although its total purchase-loan applications are far fewer compared to FHA. According to the Federal Reserve’s overview of the 2016 HMDA data, as in past years, blacks, Hispanics and “other minority” borrowers had notably higher denial rates overall compared to white borrowers. Denial rates for ...

Nearly a dozen industry trade groups sent a letter Tuesday to every member of the U.S. House of Representatives, urging them to support legislative changes to loosen up the points-and-fees cap associated with the qualified-mortgage standard. The legislative vehicle of choice is the bipartisan H.R. 1153, the Mortgage Choice Act (not to be confused with the far more comprehensive, and controversial, Financial CHOICE Act). The measure was introduced in February by ...

JPMorgan Chase exhorted the CFPB to address some fundamental flaws in the integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act – namely, an insufficient capability for lenders to “cure” the inevitable errors that occur and the significant legal liability lenders and assignees face. As the lender spelled out in its public comments to the CFPB regarding its proposed solution to the TRID “black hole” (see following story), these are two significant hurdles that are keeping private capital from returning in full force to the mortgage market. Chase urged the bureau to address a number of unresolved concerns the industry has brought up since the rule was adopted, in order to foster stability and ...

Leading trade groups that represent various segments of the mortgage and real estate industry generally support the changes the CFPB recently proposed to close the so-called black hole it inadvertently created when it drafted the integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. “The proposal recognizes that unexpected events occur regularly and cause closings to be delayed. Those delays should not prevent closings or increase costs for other consumers who are able to close on time,” the Mortgage Bankers Association said. “Amending the integrated-disclosure requirements to address the black hole will resolve these issues, and the remaining limitations on when tolerances may be reset will afford sufficient protections for consumers.” Other industry ...

The House Financial Services Committee recently passed a handful of mortgage-related bills, including H.R. 2954, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Adjustment Act, introduced in June by Rep. Tom Emmer, R-MN. His measure would exempt all but the top 10 percent of mortgage lenders from some pending data collection and reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, according to an analysis by Inside the CFPB. Starting with 2017 data (to be submitted to the CFPB in early 2018), the volume threshold for HMDA respondents is a minimum of 25 originated mortgage loans in each of the last two years (i.e., 25 loans in 2015 and 25 loans in 2016). This volume threshold only applies to depositories in 2017, then applies to ...

The CFPB recently published an updated iteration of its small-entity compliance guide for the integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, or TRID.The bureau updates this guide periodically to reflect finalized clarifications to the rule which affect guide content, as well as administrative updates. This latest version reflects the final rule that was issued July 7, 2017, and published Aug. 11, 2017. Among the revisions incorporated is the change regarding disclosure of specific seller credits (Section 13.10). There are also numerous updates to incorporate changes and clarifications from the July 7, 2017 amendments to the TILA-RESPA final rule, including: requirements and guidance on current requirements for tolerances in the good ...

The CFPB has come out with the second version of its Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (Regulation C) small-entity compliance guide. This iteration reflects a variety of changes to the bureau’s HMDA rule that were issued in August 2017 and published on Sept. 13, 2017. The HMDA rule changes the types of financial institutions that are subject to Regulation C; the types of transactions that are subject to the regulation; the data that financial institutions are required to collect, record and report; and the processes for reporting and disclosing HMDA data. According to Richard Andreano, a partner in the Washington, DC, office of the Ballard Spahr law firm, “One of the main changes incorporated in the revised guide is the temporary ...

Republicans Take Issue With Fannie/Freddie QM Exemption. Some Congressional Republicans recently expressed concerns about the special treatment that loans eligible for sale to the government-sponsored enterprises currently enjoy under the CFPB’s qualified mortgage standards.... CFPB Updates HMDA Implementation Materials, Filing Instructions Guide. As part of its effort to support the industry’s adoption of the CFPB’s recently issued 2017 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act final rule, the bureau has updated the chart titled: Collection and Reporting of HMDA Information about Ethnicity and Race.... Other Federal Regulators Issue Designated Key HMDA Data Fields List. The Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency last week jointly issued ...

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt said the likelihood of a draw from Treasury is growing fast in a reply letter to the 15 trade groups that wrote late last month advocating for legislation instead of recapitalization. Watt reiterated his position in the Oct. 12 letter and said while he appreciates their views, he has expressed “repeatedly and publicly” that the declining capital buffers leave Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac with no ability to absorb potential losses. “FHFA is concerned that in the absence of a sufficient buffer, normal operating losses, such as from interest rate volatility and the accounting treatment of...