A strong spring home-buying season and continued low rates are feeding optimism among selected lenders, fueling hopes that healthy production in May will lead to an even better June, according to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance. “May was bigger than April by 10 to 15 percent at both Skyline and New Leaf,” said Bill Dallas, CEO of Skyline Lending, Calabasas, CA. (New Leaf is the wholesale affiliate.) Not too long ago, Dallas wasn’t feeling all that optimistic about 2016. But that was then. “The year started out...
Wells Fargo, the nation’s top-ranked mortgage lender, appears to have escaped unscathed from the scrutiny the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau directed toward a former loan officer, an investigation which resulted in an $85,000 fine and a one-year ban from working in the mortgage industry. Last week, the CFPB announced a consent order with David Eghbali, formerly an LO for Wells’ Wilshire Crescent branch in Beverly Hills, CA, from November 2007 through July 2015. The bureau accused him of referring a substantial number of loan closings to a single escrow company, New Millennium Escrow, Inc., which allegedly shifted its fees from some customers to others at his request. “In exchange for the flexibility to shift fees from some loans to others, respondent [Eghbali] referred...
Ten trade organizations and community groups this week sent a letter to FHFA Director Mel Watt imploring him to suspend the quarterly GSE dividend paid to the Treasury Department...
Some potential investors in new non-agency MBS insist that a deal agent or transaction manager is necessary to revive the non-agency MBS market. Some issuers are willing to include a deal agent in their securities, though the exact functions and pricing issues still need to be worked out. “Many potential buyers of residential MBS have a strong desire for improved transaction governance mechanisms such as the use of independent deal agents,” Moody’s Investors Service said in a report published late last week. The rating service recently held a meeting with investors, issuers and others involved in the non-agency MBS market. Moody’s said...
A final rule issued last week by the Department of Labor updating overtime regulations for white collar employees didn’t include many concessions called for by mortgage industry participants. The final rule sets the standard salary level for exempt executive, administrative, professional, outside sales, and computer employees, referred to as EAP employees, at the 40th percentile of weekly earnings of full-time salaried workers in the lowest-wage Census Region. The final rule effectively doubled the salary white collar workers must be paid to be exempt from receiving overtime pay for working more than 40 hours a week. The new standard will result...
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