Most of the provisions of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act final rule the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau promulgated back in 2015 won’t take effect until January 2018, and already the agency is proposing a host of clarifications, technical corrections and minor changes with the stated goal of fostering lender compliance. Among the suggested alterations to the CFPB’s proposed rule, issued last week, is the clarification of certain key terms, such as “temporary financing” and “automated underwriting system.” The proposal also would establish...

Many borrowers could have seen significant savings on the interest rate on a mortgage if they shopped around, according to a working paper published by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Research. The bureau economists noted that close to half of consumers didn’t shop before taking out a mortgage, based on the National Survey of Mortgage Originations, a representative survey conducted by the CFPB and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. And only 16.0 percent of borrowers considered three or more lenders before obtaining a mortgage. The economists said...

More changes, or at least additional guidance, may be in the offing for the pending Home Mortgage Disclosure Act rule from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that is scheduled to take effect next year, agency Director Richard Cordray said last week during an appearance on Capitol Hill. During a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee, Rep. Brad Sherman, D-CA, pointed out, “Studies have shown that in some geographic areas, it is possible to determine the identity of nearly 100 percent of the borrowers using the data that lenders are required to collect and report by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. This is despite the fact that that act supposedly provides for anonymous data in its final form.” Sherman also ...

Community lending representatives met with Trump administration officials last week to push a package of pro-growth, regulatory relief proposals, including a number of changes to the mortgage rules promulgated by the CFPB. The meeting was held with Treasury Department officials under President Donald Trump’s executive order directing the Treasury to review existing laws, treaties, regulations, guidance, reporting and recordkeeping to determine if they promote or inhibit federal regulation of the U.S. financial system as per Trump’s core principles outlined in Executive Order 13772. Meeting with the Trump administration officials were a handful of CEOs of bank that are members of the Independent Community Bankers of America.Among the proposed changes the trade group advocated was a more expansive qualified mortgage ...

The CFPB has fined Nationstar Mortgage $1.75 million for allegedly violating the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act by “consistently failing to report accurate data about mortgage transactions for 2012 through 2014,” the agency said. The CFPB said it found that Nationstar’s HMDA compliance systems were flawed and generated mortgage lending data with significant, preventable errors. “Nationstar also failed to maintain detailed HMDA data collection and validation procedures, and failed to implement adequate compliance procedures,” the bureau alleged. “It also produced discrepancies by failing to consistently define data among its various lines of business.” Further, data samples reviewed by the CFPB showed substantial error rates in three consecutive reporting years, the bureau said. “In the samples reviewed, the CFPB found error rates ...

Nationstar in the CFPB’s Crosshairs Over HMDA Reporting. Nationstar, the residential mortgage servicer, revealed recently it is being investigated by the CFPB over issues related to complying with the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.... Non-Agency MBS Issuers Like the Legal Protection of the ATR. Congressional Republicans may be working on legislation to repeal and replace many regulations required by the Dodd-Frank Act, but some issuers of mortgage-backed securities are actually pushing to maintain some of the regulations.... Trump Executive Order on Regulatory Red Tape Unlikely to Apply to CFPB. Will the Bureau Comply Anyway? The executive order that President Trump signed in the middle of February that requires every federal agency to establish a regulatory reform task force to eliminate red tape probably does not apply to the CFPB, according to industry experts....

If federal policymakers do away with the CFPB’s mortgage rules without proper replacements, the credit quality of residential mortgage-backed securities could be compromised, analysts at Moody’s Investors Service said in a recent report. The analysts were providing a review of President Trump’s recent executive order related to the Dodd-Frank Act. “Any significant repeal of the Dodd-Frank Act’s mortgage-related provisions without effective alternatives would weaken residential RMBS credit quality because these provisions have strengthened the credit quality of mortgage originations, improved servicing practices and bolstered the credit integrity of RMBS structures,” the analysts said. The report is significant because it flies in the face of the traditional industry narrative that the bureau’s mortgage rules have been nothing but an onerous burden ...

President Donald Trump recently imposed a moratorium on new and pending regulations, which is generally considered by industry experts and observers standard operating procedure for an incoming presidential administration. But the bad news for the mortgage industry is that most of the regulations from the CFPB have already been issued. Two possible exceptions are the bureau’s Home Mortgage Disclosure Act final rule, which has been issued in final form but is not yet effective, as well as its TRID 2.0 clarifying rulemaking, which is expected in final form sometime this spring. In a memo issued by White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus, unspecified “executive departments and agencies” were generally directed to “send no regulation to the Office of the ...

Bureau Mulling Possible Changes to HMDA Resubmission Guidelines. It’s been roughly one year since the CFPB issued a request for information regarding Home Mortgage Disclosure Act resubmission guidelines, and the bureau has yet to decide which way to proceed. The agency received 31 comments in response to the RFI, which was published Jan. 12, 2016, in the Federal Register. Commenters included HMDA reporters, industry trade groups, and consumer groups.... Revisions to Interagency Compliance Rating System Still Pending. The CFPB and the other members of the FFIEC continue to review public comments on their April 29, 2016, proposal to revise the existing Uniform Interagency Consumer Compliance Rating System to reflect regulatory, supervisory, technological, and market changes since the system was established....

The denial rate on jumbo mortgages varies significantly among lenders, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Among the top 25 lenders, denial rates for jumbo applications in 2015 ranged from a low of 2.3 percent to a high of 76.8 percent. Overall, the top 25 lenders denied 18.1 percent of the $367.49 billion in total unpaid principal balance for jumbo-mortgage ... [Includes one data chart]