Compliance & Regulation

The Agoura Hills, Calif.-based risk mitigation firm has integrated Google Maps satellite images into FraudGuard to help lenders decrease loan processing time and quickly identify external issues with properties.

Getting REO to market quickly can help optimize its selling value, but rushing the presale valuation process too much could prove counterproductive, according Carl Streck, principal at MountainSeed Appraisal Management.

While it is evident that loans are receiving a great deal of scrutiny these days, it is also true that appraisal reports are generally viewed most closely for the value they recommend, not the detail they contain.

Starting in January 2008 through August 2011, Menden admitted that he and a business partner, George Hranowskyj, conspired with Bank of Commonwealth insiders to purchase underperforming bank-owned properties in exchange for preferential lending treatment.

Raj Date, the deputy director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, said the agency wants to avoid creating "disincentives" for mortgage lenders and banks as part of the qualified mortgage rule.

While by law the Federal Reserve Board must worry about price stability and unemployment, Chairman Ben Bernanke appears to have charted a third mandate for the central bank: financial stability.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency closed the $51.9 million-asset Fort Lee Federal Savings Bank. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. entered into a purchase agreement with Alma Bank in Astoria, N.Y., for $15.7 million of the failed thrift's assets.

It's nice to know there's one sector of the mortgage business that's hot. In fact, it may be overheating (does anyone want to say bubble?). It's the agricultural mortgage sector. Now, before you dismiss this niche as insignificant, read this.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau poked its thumb in the eye of residential loan officers originating mortgages for depositories.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau shut the door on states issuing transitional licenses to bank loan officers who seek work for an independent mortgage banking or brokerage shop.