Compliance & Regulation

Credit access and homeownership for low- to moderate-income families are under siege by the DOJ's overuse of the False Claims Act, as lenders worried about punitive damages discontinue Federal Housing Administration loan programs.

After the Home Affordable Modification Program ends, servicers will employ myriad proprietary workout options to meet ongoing compliance requirements. But will more discretion in loss mitigation practices create consumer and investor confusion?

The Consumer Mortgage Coalition is arguing that the bill has serious flaws by allowing private insurers to undercut pricing on federal flood insurance policies by offering high deductibles and exclusions to homeowners with mortgages guaranteed by the government-sponsored enterprises.

The Making Home Affordable program has been extended and expanded so many times that it's gotten hard to imagine life without it. But its two primary initiatives have served their purpose and the days may be numbered for HAMP and HARP.

Going forward, Fannie Mae will be relying more on loan guarantee fee income from its single-family and multifamily businesses.

Borrowers who have defaulted in the past are generally considered to be a bigger risk than those who have never missed a payment. Yet the early performance of bonds backed by rehabbed residential mortgages is pretty strong.

Fannie Mae will make a $919 million dividend payment to the U.S. Treasury Department after reporting a first-quarter profit driven by fees for guaranteeing loans against default and credit-related income.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency announced Wednesday it had raised a cap on the amount of multifamily loans Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac can buy from lenders, boosting it to $35 billion effective immediately.

Freddie Mac's second quarterly loss in less than a year makes it clear profitability is getting tougher as it shrinks. But it's a concern that must be weighed against more long-term efforts to reduce Freddie's overall credit risk exposure.

At least one banker has gone public with expectations that the OCC will force his institution to hold more capital. More could soon follow.