Two significant issues related to the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act have received fresh attention at the Supreme Court, which is expected to make landmark rulings next year. The U.S. Solicitor General and a group of state attorneys general filed briefs in Freeman v. Quicken Loans, a case in which the high court will likely determine the ability of the mortgage lending industry to decide what to charge borrowers at the point of origination. RESPA Section 8(b) provides that “no person shall give and no person shall accept any portion, split or percentage of...

Industry experts and trade groups said this week they were generally supportive of a House Republican bill to create a new non-agency residential MBS market, but they still want the government to have a role, however limited, in the final product. The Private Mortgage Market Investment Act, drafted but not yet filed by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ, would create a heavily regulated MBS market made up solely of private entities that would function with no federal guarantee at all. Garrett, who chairs the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Government...

Federal financial regulators are still sifting through stacks of criticism about their controversial risk-retention proposal for the MBS and ABS market and have not yet decided whether to start over again with a new proposed rule, as most industry groups have urged them to do. The agencies are also getting a lot of push from Capitol Hill to re-think the original proposal, which was released in late March. “I am very concerned that if the qualified residential mortgage definition being worked out by regulators isn’t broad enough, it could hurt the housing market, especially...

Lawmakers and experts reviewing a proposed bill that seeks to drastically overhaul the secondary mortgage market without the need for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac question whether the Federal Housing Finance Agency is the most appropriate choice to implement key components of the program.The Private Mortgage Market Investment Act, drafted but not yet filed by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ, would create a heavily regulated mortgage-backed securities market made up solely of private entities that would function with no federal guarantee at all.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be put into “irrevocable receivership” with the Federal Housing Finance Agency tasked as their receiver no later than 18 months after enactment of a bill introduced in the Senate this week.Sen. Johnny Isakson, R-GA, introduced the Mortgage Finance Act of 2011 to “get the American taxpayer out of the business of bailing out the mortgage industry.” The bill would wind down Fannie and Freddie while creating a new regulatory framework for “high-quality” mortgage securitization for both single-family and multifamily mortgages.

The CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac told lawmakers last week they have been working to manage all expenses prudently at the taxpayer-subsidized government-sponsored enterprises even as they sought to explain away reports that the two GSEs ran up a six-figure bill attending an industry convention in Chicago in October.Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Fannie CEO Michael Williams and Freddie CEO Charles Haldeman noted the GSEs’ importance in the current and future mortgage markets even as they cited their efforts to reduce overall expenses through money-saving cuts and improvements in operational efficiency over the last three years.

The dust is starting to settle over an increasingly complex landscape of agency loan limits for 2012 that features 83 defined metro markets where the FHA can insure loans that are too big to be financed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week released guidance on FHA loan limits that changed twice in calendar 2011. On Oct. 1, a new set of FHA loan limits based on a $625,500 maximum went into effect, and they will apply to loans with FHA case numbers assigned between that date and Nov. 17, said...(Includes one data chart)

President Barack Obama and his Democrat allies on Capitol Hill initiated a multi-prong attack against their Republican opponents this week in an effort to put them on the hook in the 2012 election over their refusal to allow an up-or-down vote on Richard Cordray, the president’s nominee to head the controversial Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The initiative started this weekend, when the White House released a report and began an accompanying media blitz, warning of the dangers American consumers face in the financial marketplace without a director at the...

It would be better for the mortgage market, for taxpayers and for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac if Congress did not dawdle in promulgating housing finance reform and clarified the future role, if any, the two government-sponsored enterprises will have, the CEOs of Fannie and Freddie told lawmakers this week. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, Fannie CEO Michael Williams and Freddie CEO Charles Haldeman called on Congress to take action as the continued lack of clarity about Fannie and Freddie’s future is harmful to...

Commercial banks will have to do more than just look at the credit rating on a security before deciding it qualifies as a potential investment under a proposed rule issued by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency this week. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. is scheduled to consider a similar proposal next week. Under marching orders from the Dodd-Frank Act, bank regulators have been removing references to external credit ratings from a variety of regulations – even though banks themselves don’t agree with the change. Most commenters on earlier proposals from...