Compliance & Regulation

It appears the great debate over altering the minimum servicing fee paid by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is coming to a close with many mortgage professionals hoping that in the end no change whatsoever will be made.

The top regulator of the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Wednesday he won't rush the 12-bank cooperative to correct their balance sheets, but does expect some alteration soon.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is engaging in an exhaustive process of testing and refining a new mortgage disclosure and it is actively seeking industry input to make sure it is easier and less costly to use than the existing Good Faith Estimate and Truth in Lending Act disclosures.

The restoration of the private-label MBS market is being threatened by several regulatory efforts to re-engineer the entire "securitization machine," according to new Congressional testimony from the American Securitization Forum.

The issue of premium capture continues to cause perhaps the most concern in the securities market when it comes to the developing risk retention requirements for securitized product.

A prominent realtor, her son and daughter-in-law pleaded guilty earlier this week to an expanding mortgage fraud that enabled them to buy expensive vacation homes at Alabama’s Gulf Shores using “straw borrowers” to qualify for credit union loans.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is set to release Wednesday two prototypes for a single, streamlined mortgage disclosure form.

As home prices fall again and regulatory reforms take hold, long-simmering tensions between mortgage lenders and appraisers are flaring up anew.

Politicians and government leaders did not have a comprehensive knowledge of the mortgage and appraisal industries as they struggled to set the policy that avoided an even deeper financial crisis than what occurred in 2008, said former U.S. Congressman Paul Kanjorski during a technology conference ongoing in Las Vegas this week.

Once mortgage fraudsters find a chink in a lender's armor, they not only zero in on it, but they also pass it around to their fellow thieves, speakers at a conference in Las Vegas said.