Paul Muolo

Is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau lost when it comes to reengineering how loan officers and brokers can make a living? The words “confused” and “disorganized” are being used to describe the agency’s recent meetings with 17 professionals representing the “small” lending part of the industry.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Thursday will hold a second conference within two days with 17 small lender participants who are slated to give the agency commentary regarding its controversial mortgage compensation rule.

Federal prosecutors Wednesday accused Washington Council chairman Kwame R. Brown with mortgage fraud, saying he lied on his home mortgage application as part of a scheme to buy a $50,000 power boat.

Milestone Merchant Partners is circulating an offering book on $30.8 billion of mortgage servicing rights that once belonged to now-defunct Taylor, Bean & Whitaker.

Although loan originations are booming at Caliber Funding, the lender recently gave walking papers to a regional production manager and a division manager.

Two weeks ago, when industry officials met with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to discuss the agency’s proposals to reengineer how loan officers and brokers can make a living, it was a nightmare – a nightmare in the sense that few in attendance thought the agency understood the issues at hand.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is giving the 17 or so participants in its “small business” review panel five additional days to offer comments on the agency’s mortgage banking compensation proposals.

Some mortgage bankers are hoping for a Romney White House with the first order of business being the death of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Of course, even if Romney wins that doesn’t mean he will be able to jam a bill to kill the agency quickly through the House and Senate.

Bank of America over the past two weeks has unloaded roughly $12.4 billion of legacy mortgage servicing rights, selling most of it to Nationstar Mortgage.

Home prices—including distressed sales—increased in April for the second consecutive month (by 2.2%), the first time this has happened in almost two years.

The Government National Mortgage Association approved 35 issuer licenses last year and hopes to approve about the same this year.

The final wholesale tally is in for 2011and the nation’s top ranked wholesalers – in terms of volume – were: Provident Funding Associates ($19.8 billion), Wells Fargo ($18.1 billion), U.S. Bank Home Mortgage ($7.3 billion), MetLife Home Loans ($6.6 billion), and Fifth Third Mortgage ($6.1 billion).

Although the U.S. soccer team lost to Brazil the other night we can thank the interest rate gods that investors, world wide, keep buying our Treasury bonds, driving prices up and bond yield downs. In the past I've joked about a 30-year fixed rate loan at 2% and I'm starting to believe that it could happen.

Amherst notes that lending standards in FHA/VA programs have remained “roughly constant” with more activity gravitating toward the two programs.

If you’re looking for a patch of brightness in the national job numbers that came out Friday morning look at the mortgage brokerage employment line: broker firms added 2,300 loan officers and other staffers to their payrolls in April.

The Government National Mortgage Association approved 35 issuer licenses last year and hopes to approve about the same this year, according to agency president Ted Tozer.

Is the Government National Mortgage Association actually making progress in clearing its backlog of issuer applications? Answer: It all depends on who you ask.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau this week decided to delay the issuance of a final "qualified mortgage" rule until after the Nov. 6 elections. The scoop was first reported by National Mortgage News on its website Thursday. This new development has prompted many loan officers and nonbank lenders to speculate that maybe (just maybe) the CFPB will delay its compensation proposals until well into next year.

SunTrust Mortgage hired former MetLife Home Loans executive Linda Steiner as a regional wholesale manager based in the Pacific Northwest area.

There has been a ton of confusion surrounding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 37 pages of rule making on mortgage compensation. We just want to point out that the rule is far from settled.