The Department of Housing and Urban Development expects to issue the long-anticipated FHA FY 2013 independent review of the state of the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund on or before the middle of December. The report’s release was delayed due to the three-week government shutdown in October.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are designing a securitization framework that will work for today’s fully-guaranteed residential MBS as well as securities with a partial government guaranty or none at all, according to an update released this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Among the initiatives set for the government-sponsored enterprises by the FHFA is the development of a contractual and disclosure framework designed to give MBS investors more clarity and confidence about what they’re…

Elsewhere, in the report FHFA claims significant progress has been made on the development and initial testing of the GSEs’ common securitization platform.

Mortgage industry officials note that the size and complexity of the disclosure rules and other regulations taking effect in January will cause huge operational and system challenges.

The CFPB has come up with a new three-page loan estimate form ("Ficus") that must be given to borrowers within three business days after they submit a loan application.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau had previously indicated that the industry could expect the rule sometime in September, then October, and now, sometime before year’s end.

It was the now-senior Democrat senator from Massachusetts, Elizabeth Warren, who faulted the Fed for enabling the financial crisis that prompted such an unconventional accommodative response in the first place.

The CFPB expects the vast majority of institutions to be in substantial compliance with its new mortgage rules by the January deadlines.

Are mortgage bankers so diabolical that they attempt to find a way around new regulations? Industry consultant Joe Garrett of Garrett, McAuley & Co. thinks so.

Paul Rozo, who runs PRMG, told us that he is not a big fan of call centers and that every LO in his organization is a “hunter,” a sales person “who relies on referral business and/or handling their own marketing."