Vacant foreclosed properties with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are not subject to the City of Chicago’s registration ordinance, according to a recent ruling from the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The ordinance, which took effect in November 2011, requires mortgage lenders to register vacant properties with the city and pay a $500 registration fee. The ordinance also directs lenders to secure and maintain vacant buildings in accordance with city requirements.

Standard & Poor’s this week threw another counterpunch against the federal government’s civil fraud lawsuit filed earlier this year, slamming the litigation as “retaliation” for the rating agency’s August 2011 downgrade of the country’s AAA credit rating. The Justice Department in February filed a $5.0 billion lawsuit accusing S&P of knowingly inflating its ratings in residential MBS and collateralized debt obligations to boost its revenue and market share in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. The filing in the U.S. District Court in Santa Ana, CA, by S&P’s parent company McGraw-Hill Co. seeks...

The U.S. Justice Department has subpoenaed documents from Clayton Holdings LLC, once Wall Street’s largest mortgage due-diligence firm, as investigators eye-ball the due diligence that was performed on residential MBS deals in the run-up to the financial crisis. According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department presented a subpoena to Clayton on July 1, requesting an extensive amount of documentation having to do with the firm’s work on such deals. The DoJ is apparently seeking internal communications related to a review of pools of loans, due-diligence reviews performed by Clayton, as well as all communication between the clients for whom the company performed such reviews and the employees with which they dealt. The subpoena is...

Fannie Mae is starting to market a risk-sharing transaction to investors. A Fannie spokesman said the government-sponsored enterprise is working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency to meet the goals set by the conservator of the GSEs. Mark Lefanowicz will be the CEO of Fenway Summer’s mortgage venture, according to an announcement this week by Raj Date, the founder of the firm. Fenway Summer plans to originate non-qualified mortgages and Lefanowicz has previously worked at ... [Includes five briefs]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is phasing out the Saver and Standard loan products under the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program in favor of a new reverse mortgage that limits the amount of money a borrower can draw at closing to 60 percent of the value of the home. The fixed and adjustable HECM Standard and Saver options will still be available until Sept. 29, said HUD. The revised principal limit, pricing and disbursement policies for the new HECM product will become effective on Sept. 30. The revised HECM guidance also ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has charged Fifth Third Bank and a mortgage broker with discrimination for allegedly requiring medical proof from a couple with disabilities who were seeking FHA refinancing. Fifth Third Bank, Fifth Third Mortgage Co. and Cranbrook Mortgage Corp. were accused of violating the Fair Housing Act, which makes it illegal for creditors to deny or discriminate against borrowers based on disability, race, color, religion, national origin, gender or family status, including imposing different application or criteria on protected classes. The married couple, whose names HUD withheld, receive ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced it will accept electronic signatures in closing home loans with a VA guaranty. The VA said lenders are not required to use electronic signatures in VA loans but if they choose to, they must comply with the Federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act, or the E-Sign Act. The measure was signed into law in June 2000. The E-Sign Act establishes the baseline rules for Internet commerce, including nondiscrimination between handwritten and electronic signatures. The law also requires that electronic records be ...

VA Loan Guaranty: New Percentage to Determine Net Value of Collateral. The Department of Veterans Affairs has revised the percentage lenders and mortgage holders in the VA loan guaranty program use in calculating the purchase price of a property that secured a terminated loan. Effective Oct. 8, 2013, the new percentage is 14.95 percent, up from 11.87 percent, which has been in place for the past 12 years. North Carolina Amends Anti-Predatory Lending Law. The Tar Heel State enacted HB 692 on Aug. 23 to strengthen current consumer protections against ...

Servicers last week rejected offers from Richmond, CA to purchase 624 mortgages located in the city. Richmond now plans to seize the mortgages via eminent domain but has yet to make the move and faces significant opposition from mortgage industry participants. The five servicers participating in the $25 billion national servicing settlement have provided borrowers with $51.33 billion in gross relief through the end of the second quarter of 2013, according to the settlement’s monitor ... [Includes five briefs]

Parties to trustee lawsuits challenging a city’s use of eminent domain to deal with foreclosures are gearing up for a face-off at an injunction hearing Sept. 13 in federal district court in San Francisco. The city of Richmond, CA, the defendant in the lawsuit, has suffered setbacks in the last few days and has yet to make good on its threat to initiate eminent domain proceedings after investor trustees rejected its offer to purchase distressed mortgages for restructuring. Wells Fargo and Deutsche Bank, acting as trustees for a group of ...