Compliance & Regulation

When the qualified mortgage rule took effect in January, many predicted the rule would stifle lending to low-income and minority borrowers. But a credit crunch never materialized, thanks to exemptions given to federal mortgage agencies.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has ordered a New Jersey company, Stonebridge Title Services Inc., to pay $30,000 for paying illegal kickbacks for referrals.

Ocwen Financial Corp. agreed to pay $3.7 million to end a Massachusetts lawsuit claiming it didn't give homeowners required notices and illegally foreclosed on properties, the state’s attorney general said.

Smaller banks face a tricky choice with jumbo loans: hold them and face rate risk, or sell them to a bigger bank and risk losing a customer. An unusual arrangement between the FHLB and a REIT could offer community banks a better route.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recognized a distinction in terms of the treatment of persons working for a company based upon their classification as employees or contractors.

WinWater is the first new jumbo residential mortgage-backed securities issuer to put a deal in the pipeline since 2013. More new players could bring deals to market late this year.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are exempt from state and local taxes, including transfer taxes, a Washington appeals court ruled in the latest decision shielding the government-owned mortgage finance companies from attempts to collect levies on property transfers.

The Justice Department has asked Citigroup for more than $10 billion to settle a probe into the lender's sale of mortgage-backed bonds in the run up to the 2008 financial crisis.

The Chicago Federal Home Loan Bank reaches agreement with Redwood Trust so member institutions can sell loans to the private-label issuer.

Sen. Lindsay Graham questioned payments to a senior advisor of Shaun Donovan, who currently heads the Department of Housing and Urban Development and has been nominated to lead the Office of Management and Budget.