Compliance & Regulation

As a fallback position, the National Association of Home Builders is willing to accept limits on incentives builders can offer buyers that use their mortgage and title companies -- but only to keep HUD from taking more restrictive actions.

Changes in the Federal Housing Administration program, today's conservative underwriting and recent evidence of the wholesale channel's profitability could make it and the third-party origination business in general more attractive to some players—as it has for Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp., Sun Prairie, Wis.

To fully end "too-big-to-fail" we need to make our financial system safer for failure. We cannot rely on the hope of perfect foresight—whether by regulators, or by managers of firms, private sector gatekeepers, or other market participants. Financial activity involves risk, and no one will be able to identify all risks or prevent all future crises.

Regulatory changes continue to largely drive automation for those on the production side, especially when it comes to documents, according to executives at DocMagic Inc., Carson, Calif., which does business as Document Systems Inc.

Texas attorney general Greg Abbott has charged Coppell-based American Home Mortgage Servicing Inc., the nation's largest independent subprime servicer, with allegedly using illegal debt collection tactics and improperly misleading struggling homeowners.

A cease-and-desist order has been issued by the Georgia Department of Banking and Finance to The Pinnacle Division LLC, formerly known as MMS Holdings LLC, and doing business as The Sly Team and www.theslyteam.com, located in Atlanta.

Even if you have not experienced this for yourself, nearly everyone has heard horror stories from a blind date. They have become a cultural archetype in every way. You go in expecting young, athletic, charming and too often, find yourself grappling with the liberal application of those words. Growing up in the mortgage industry over the last 20 years, I can attest that a few parallels exist here. What you thought was a great deal for the bank, that solid customer with the high FICO score, great employment, and low debt ratios turns out to be a house of cards built on shifting sands, and the "perfect match" ends in default and risk.

THE NUMBER OF NEWLY DELINQUENT HOME LOANS HAS RISEN FOR TWO STRAIGHT QUARTERS in what could foreshadow another surge in unemployment-related foreclosures.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will require homeowners with "green energy" loans from municipalities to pay them off when refinancing their mortgages — unless the borrowers don't have enough equity, in which case the green liens can stay.

Large banks are agreeing to give local governments and nonprofit groups the ability to buy foreclosed homes before they are sold to private investors, according to a report in the Associated Press.