The National Association of Mortgage Brokers, the Mortgage Bankers Association and the National Association of Realtors are scheduled to meet with CFPB Director Richard Cordray and his staff this week to discuss various issues related to the bureau’s ability-to-repay rule and its qualified mortgage standard. More specifically, during their Tuesday, Nov. 5, 2013, meeting, the industry representatives plan to raise the impact of the points-and-fees cap, what they assert are the biases against mortgage brokers, and the ability for consumers to...
Mortgage lenders got a huge compliance and liability break, courtesy of the CFPB and the other federal financial regulators. A mortgage lender’s strategic decision to provide only qualified mortgages, in and of itself, will not raise its fair lending risk, the CFPB and four other regulators declared in new guidance issued last month. The agencies said they have received numerous inquiries from mortgage lenders about whether they would be liable under the disparate-impact doctrine of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and its implementing...
Congress has no need to enact additional legislation to impose tough loss-mitigation standards on servicers and owners of securitized residential mortgage loans for the benefit of consumers. The CFPB’s mortgage servicing regulation thoroughly covers all related issues in this regard, according to a leading industry attorney. Larry Platt, a consumer finance lawyer at the global law firm K&L Gates, LLP, appeared late last month in a personal capacity before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee to discuss the Housing...
The complaints that consumers filed with the CFPB about their mortgages fell for the second straight quarter during the third quarter of 2013, and with a bigger drop – 16.8 percent – than was seen in 2Q13, when the fall off was at 9.2 percent, according to a new analysis of consumer complaint data by Inside the CFPB. Leading the way again were gripes about loan modifications, which fell 25.5 percent in the third quarter, versus a drop of 10.3 percent in 2Q13. Complaints related to applications and other aspects of the...{includes 1 chart]
CFPB Director Richard Cordray tried to reassure the mortgage lending community that the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule with its qualified mortgage standard will provide all the legal protections they are expecting. One issue “that some consultants and lawyers have raised is whether the law and our rule will deliver the assured and predictable legal protections even for QM loans,” Cordray said in an address recently before the annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association in Washington, DC. “We believe strongly that they will...
The CFPB recently updated its Small Entity Compliance Guide to the ability‐to‐repay/qualified mortgage rule, which takes effect in January. The updated guide reflects clarifications and changes – formally known as the June 2013 ATR/QM concurrent final rule, the July 2013 final rule, and the October 2013 final rule – made to the rule since it was issued in January 2013. Among the most notable changes in the October 2013 final rule reflected in the updated guide is the exclusion of compensation that is paid by a retailer of...
Ocwen Financial posted record revenues in the third quarter of 2013 that could have been even higher if not for unexpected delays in boarding $42.0 billion in unpaid principal balance on non-agency mortgages from OneWest Bank. Officials at Ocwen wouldn’t reveal the exact cause of the delay. The loans were in non-agency mortgage-backed securities issued by IndyMac, which was taken over by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. in 2008 and sold by the FDIC to OneWest in 2009. Ocwen officials said delays ...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each managed to meet its risk-sharing objectives for 2013 without breaking the link to the to-be-announced market, but their regulator wants the government-sponsored enterprises to go beyond the comfort zone. The risk-sharing transactions undertaken by the GSEs this year were very positive, but they relied on the “underlying infrastructure” of Fannie and Freddie MBS, said Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, in a speech at this week’s annual convention of the Mortgage Bankers Association. The Structured Agency Credit Transactions and Connecticut Avenue Securities launched, respectively, by Freddie and Fannie, involved selling relatively small amounts of debt that will pay investors based on the performance of separate MBS pools that were issued and trade in the TBA market. DeMarco wants...
As leaders of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee continue their slow but steady efforts to craft a comprehensive, bipartisan mortgage finance reform bill, experts generally agreed on the necessity for some sort of government backstop for MBS but differed on the details. This week’s hearing was the first of several planned by Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-ID, as they work to build out their own reform legislation on top of the bill, S. 1217, filed earlier this year by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, and Mark Warner, D-VA. Johnson said...
RSS