The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with the CFPB on its interpretation of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, but refused to “give deference” to the amicus brief in which the bureau’s argument was presented. “Here, CFPB is interpreting the statute, not the regulation. An agency’s interpretation of the statute – when presented in an amicus brief – is not promulgated in the exercise of its formal rulemaking authority, so no … deference is warranted,” ruled the court. Further, even if certain terms in the statute also appear in the regulation, the CFPB “is in fact interpreting Congress’s words in the statute, so we give no deference to CFPB’s interpretation,” the court said. “In addition, because the statutory terms at issue ...

Members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives are returning to Washington, DC, this week, after their August recess concluded with the Labor Day holiday weekend. That means mortgage industry officials have less than one month to convince Congress and the Obama administration to sign off on regulatory relief from the CFPB’s pending TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule, which kicks in Oct. 3, 2015. Last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association began a grass-roots lobbying campaign urging its members to get in touch with their respective members of Congress to support legislation that would establish a temporary enforcement grace period and legal safe harbor under the TRID. “A temporary legal safe harbor for lenders will ensure the new requirements are ...

M&T Bank Settles Allegations It Used ‘Neighborhood Racial Criteria’ for Mortgage Product. A court approved M&T Bank's settlement with the Fair Housing Justice Center under which the Buffalo, NY-based bank will pay $485,000 while agreeing to revise its residential origination policies. The nonprofit FHJC filed a lawsuit in February after investigating the bank’s “Get Started Program.” The mortgage product is aimed at homes in “majority minority” neighborhoods or in low- or moderate-income areas. The product is for first-time homebuyers and it allows for low downpayments and the ability to finance closing costs. The FHJC found that M&T loan officers discriminated against potential borrowers based on race and national origin, alleging violations of the Fair Housing Act. Among other issues, minority ...

Wells Fargo this week said it would reinstate certain credit overlays on its FHA business segment after expressing frustration over FHA’s republished proposal on loan-level certification. The lender, which ranked second on Inside FHA/VA Lending’s top FHA lenders for the first six months of 2015, reiterated the need for clearer rules in order to originate FHA-insured loans without fear of litigation or enforcement action. The bank said it is very disappointed with FHA’s revised certification proposal, which was republished in the Sept. 1 Federal Register. “In spite of much input to FHA from various consumer groups and lenders over a long period of time, [the] proposal falls short of what is needed,” said Mike Heid, head of Wells Fargo Home Lending. “As a result, this will now force us to add back certain credit overlays on the FHA single-family program.” Other FHA lenders could follow Wells Fargo’s lead as some did when ...

Securitized FHA,VA and rural housing loans in Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities totaled $188.5 billion in the first six months of 2015, fueled by significant purchase and refinance activity, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of Ginnie Mae data. An estimated $113.4 billion in FHA-insured mortgages were securitized during the first half of the year. Of that total, $60.6 billion were purchase mortgages and $44.2 billion were refinance loans. FHA purchase-loan production increased 58.8 percent in the second quarter from the prior quarter while refi lending jumped 160.8 percent over the same period as FHA’s reduced annual mortgage insurance premium began to take hold. The FHA loans that went into Ginnie MBS showed an average loan-to-value ratio of 92.8 percent and an average debt-to-income ratio of 39.7 percent. Borrowers’ average FICO score was 675.9, which was indicative of ... [ 2 charts ]

Lawsuits filed by the city of Miami against Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo were revived by an appeals court this week. The fair housing lawsuits allege a decade-long pattern of discriminatory lending that caused the city economic harm. The lawsuits were filed in December 2013. Miami claimed that predatory lending by the banks caused minority-owned properties in the city to fall into unnecessary or premature foreclosure, which deprived Miami of tax revenue and forced the city to spend more on municipal services to combat blight. The city made claims under the Fair Housing Act and state law. The city backed up...

 Fannie Research Shows House Price Decline for Some Oil States: The prospect of an oil bust draws comparisons to the housing slump of the 1980s in Fannie Mae’s  research released Aug. 28. While most Americans enjoyed lower gasoline prices over that period, severe employment losses occurred within the oil industry, and many oil-producing states experienced general economic slowdowns and declining house prices. North Dakota, Wyoming and Alaska are most at risk.     …

The CFPB, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency brought a combined $37.3 million enforcement action against Citizens Bank earlier this month for allegedly failing to credit consumers the full amounts of their deposited funds. The regulatory agencies accused the bank of keeping money from deposit discrepancies when receipts did not match actual money transferred. “Citizens Bank regularly denied customers the full credits of their deposits when there were discrepancies between deposit slips and the actual money transferred into the bank,” said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. “The bank chose to ignore these discrepancies and harmed many consumers by pocketing the difference.” The CFPB said its investigation found that from January 1, 2008, to ...

In another example of joint agency enforcement and jurisdictional cooperation, the CFPB and the New York Department of Financial Services filed a lawsuit in federal court last week against Pension Funding LLC and Pension Income LLC, and three of the companies’ managers over allegations they deceived consumers about the costs and risks of their pension advance loans. From 2011 until about December 2014, Pension Funding and Pension Income, two California-based companies, offered consumers lump-sum cash advances for agreeing to redirect all or part of their pension payments over a period of eight years, according to CFPB and the NYDFS. More specifically, the joint complaint alleges that the companies and individual defendants Steven Covey, Edwin Lichtig and Rex Hofelter represented to ...

The CFPB last week ordered Springstone Financial LLC of Westborough, MA – now known as Lending Club Patient Solutions – to provide $700,000 in relief to roughly 3,200 victims of allegedly deceptive credit enrollment tactics. The bureau said the business practices at issue took place mostly before the company’s acquisition by LendingClub Corp., a $140 million transaction that took place back in April 2014 with financing provided from funds and accounts handled by T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Wellington Management Company LLP, BlackRock Inc. and Sands Capital, according to Bloomberg News. According to the CFPB, a number of consumers who signed up for Springstone’s deferred-interest loan product at dental offices to finance dental work were led to believe that the product was ...