The CFPB is apparently disturbed by recent press accounts of possibly discriminatory lending practices by Vanderbilt Mortgage and Finance, a lending arm for the mobile home builder Clayton Homes, both of which are part of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Company. “The allegations of discrimination and predatory practices raised by the reporting are obviously very concerning to the bureau,” said Sam Gilford, a spokesman for the CFPB. Bureau officials would not comment further. In recent weeks, The Seattle Times and BuzzFeed used data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act to claim that Vanderbilt Mortgage, a manufactured housing lender owned by Clayton, consistently originates loans with higher interest rates for minorities compared with interest rates on loans the company originates for white ...

The Department of Justice announced in December that a structured finance supervisor at RBS Securities pleaded guilty to participating in a multi-million dollar securities fraud scheme and is cooperating with the government’s ongoing investigation. Adam Siegel was co-head of U.S. ABS, MBS and commercial MBS trading at RBS between 2008 and 2014. The U.S. Attorney’s Office in the District of Connecticut said Siegel admitted that he and others conspired to increase RBS’s profits on trades of residential MBS and collateralized loan obligations at the expense of customers. “His crime included...

A case in bankruptcy court regarding the priority of payment provisions for collateralized debt obligations could have broad ramifications for derivatives transactions at the heart of the structured finance industry, according to the Structured Finance Industry Group and other industry groups. In late December, SFIG filed an amicus brief in Lehman Brothers Special Financing v. Bank of America, which is being heard in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association and the International Swaps and Derivatives Association filed a separate brief, making points similar to those raised by SFIG. LBSF is suing...

Quicken Loans is considering its next move – possibly a change of litigation venue – following last week’s ruling by a Michigan federal district court dismissing the lender’s lawsuit against the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Justice Department for failure to state a claim. The lawsuit, which challenged the DOJ’s use of the False Claim Act and HUD’s use of statistical sampling in post-endorsement loan reviews, was filed in April 2015, a week before the DOJ sued Quicken for allegedly filing false claims on FHA mortgages and other violations. Quicken’s lawsuit claimed...

It’s too soon to tell whether marketplace lending will disrupt traditional mortgage lending, but analysts such as Freddie Mac economist Sean Becketti predict that the alternative, Internet-based lending structure will have an impact. “Will marketplace lenders become an Uber-like disruptive force in consumer lending, or are they simply old-fashioned consumer lending dressed up for the Internet?” asked Becketti. “It's too soon to tell.” But the swift growth of the industry, coupled with its emphasis on Internet outreach and novel underwriting practices, has led...

Some lenders offering non-qualified mortgages see the product as a way to generate volume in a sector of the market that most competitors are avoiding. However, even some prominent non-QM lenders aren’t comfortable originating the loans in New York State. New York was the fourth-ranked state in terms of total originations in 2014, according to an analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated publication, accounting for 4.2 percent of ...

Investors should see a higher share of VA collateral in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities pools due to increasing VA loan originations, according to Deutsche Bank analysts. Given their rising share of VA collateral, new Ginnie pools are likely to have worse convexity than most of those originated in 2015, analysts said. “VA loans tend to prepay faster than FHA loans when in the money as VA loans have larger loan sizes, higher FICO scores and a more efficient streamline refi program that requires a minimum three months seasoning,” they observed. In addition, analysts expect the population of younger veterans to surge approximately 36 percent over the next five years. “[As such], there will be a healthy supply of new VA originations eligible for pooling,” they said. As a result, the share of FHA relative to VA collateral in new Ginnie II pools will likely decrease, they said. Such a trend has manifested itself slowly as ...

FHA lenders funded $12.3 billion in new Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans during the first nine months of 2015, up a hefty 22.2 percent from the same period in the prior year, according to Inside FHA/VA Lending’s analysis of agency data. Likewise, HECM endorsements increased 17.3 percent to $4.5 billion in the third quarter from $3.9 billion in the prior quarter. This was the highest HECM endorsements have been since the second quarter of 2013, when they totaled $4.1 billion. Purchase loans accounted for 85.8 percent of all HECM originations over the nine-month period. The majority of borrowers favored adjustable-rate HECMs over fixed-rate HECMs, which accounted for only 14.8 percent of HECM transactions. In addition, the initial principal amount at loan originations totaled $7.3 billion, up from $4.6 billion midway through 2015. The volume increase is attributable to program changes implemented ... [1 chart]

Nearly 2,400 FHA lenders will receive electronic notifications on Jan. 1, 2016, from the Department of Housing and Urban Development instructing them to begin their recertification process or risk exclusion from the FHA program. HUD is encouraging the estimated 85 percent of FHA lenders that operate on a calendar-year basis, instead of a fiscal-year basis, to prepare their recertification packages for submission to the Lender Electronic Assessment Portal (LEAP). LEAP allows FHA lenders to complete annual recertification, among other things. The portal is accessible through FHA Connection, which provides lenders and business partners a path to HUD’s computer systems. Annual recertification can be a lengthy, time-consuming process for ...