Compliance & Regulation

Federal Reserve Board staffers may be reconsidering their position on how fees paid to real estate brokerage and title agency affiliates of mortgage firms are treated under the agency's pending loan officer compensation rule, National Mortgage News has learned.

Lenders are finding that more seniors are turning to Federal Housing Administration-insured reverse mortgages as a last resort to their financial problems, according to Generation Mortgage chairman Jeff Lewis.

The Federal Reserve Board said it will host a webinar March 17 to provide "updated information" and answer questions about its controversial loan officer compensation rule, which goes into effect April 1.

In what could be called the housing finance industry's version of "Scared Straight," a veteran regulatory attorney read the riot act to a group of industry executives in Las Vegas, warning them that the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau can be expected to come down hard on mortgage firms that don't toe the line.

The 27-page term sheet handed to the five largest residential servicers last week is a detailed, dense list of requirements that, if implemented as proposed, would fundamentally change the relationship between servicers, investors and borrowers.

A majority of business economists believes federal regulators should require a high down payment on "qualified residential mortgages" that will be exempt from risk retention.

The National Association of Independent Housing Professionals on Monday sued the Federal Reserve Board in U.S. District Court, seeking to block the agency's controversial loan officer compensation rule, which becomes operative April 1.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development's inspector general found "systemic problems" in lenders' compliance with underwriting requirements for Federal Housing Administration loans.

Catherine Kissick, a well known figure in warehouse lending circles, late Friday pleaded guilty to criminal charges tied to the collapse of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, a large FHA lender based in Ocala, Fla.

Connecticut attorney Richard Novak pleaded guilty last week in U.S. District Court to making a false statement on a federal mortgage loan document.