First Horizon announced on Thursday that its regional bank agreed to a $212.5 million settlement with the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The settlement relates to First Tennessee Bank’s underwriting and origination of FHA-insured mortgages from 2006 through 2008.
Broker originations delivered to the GSEs increased by 16.0 percent in the first quarter of 2015 compared with the previous quarter, the biggest gain among the three production channels.
Some 32 percent of first-time homebuyers said that referrals from friends, family or co-workers had a major influence on their choice of lender, compared with only 18 percent of repeat homebuyers.
In its largest single-property loan purchase to date, Freddie Mac Multifamily and Holliday Fenoglio Fowler, L.P., announced on April 9, that they closed on an $878 million loan for a historic, luxury apartment in Los Angeles. Home to approximately 10,000 residents, La Brea is the largest apartment community on the West Coast and is said to resemble a small city. It has 4,245 units comprised of high-rise towers and garden-style apartments spread throughout 144 acres. Freddie plans to securitize the loan through its K-Deal program. HFF arranged the financing for Prime Residential, one of the largest owners of multi-family rental communities on the West Coast, to retire existing debt.
The CFPB brought an enforcement action against RMK Financial Corp., a California-based mortgage lender, for allegedly using deceptive mortgage advertising practices, including ads that led consumers to believe that the company was affiliated with the U.S. government.
The Department of Veterans Affairs will continue removing barriers to delivering home-loan benefits to veterans and service members in 2015, focusing more on further improvements in appraisal and servicing.
George Mason University real estate professor Anthony Sanders, a former head of asset-backed and mortgage-backed securities research at Deutsche Bank, took issue this week with a recent report from the Urban Institute which suggested that residential mortgage credit is still too tight because there are 4 million fewer mortgages originated this year than in 2001, before the housing bubble.
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