Compliance & Regulation

Before leaving for recess Thursday, the Senate confirmed Martin Gruenberg, Thomas Hoenig and Jeremiah Norton to seats on the board of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. while also approving Thomas Curry as comptroller of the currency.

It was announced this week that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is planning on issuing a proposed rule changing the current loan officer compensation laws in the near future.

Mortgage brokers are complaining to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that the loan officer compensation rule is making it more expensive and difficult to close loans -- and it appears the bureau is listening.

While Senate Republicans seem to have largely moved past President Obama's controversial recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it was clear Thursday that the House GOP has not.

Reps. Steve LaTourette and Marcia Fudge of Ohio have introduced a bill that would provide $4 billion for states and land banks to issue newly created 30-year tax credit demolition bonds to demolish vacant, foreclosed and abandoned homes across the country to prevent "a tsunami of blight."

While Senate Republicans seem to have largely moved past President Obama's controversial recess appointment of Richard Cordray to head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, it was clear Thursday that the House GOP has not.

Over the past few months eWarehouseOne has been gaining somewhat of a buzz among small to medium-sized nonbanks that have been searching high and low for a good deal in warehouse financing. But at the same time, these very same lenders have been asking a very basic question: who exactly are these guys?

New York attorney general Eric Schneiderman's efforts to carve $15 million out of the state's $132 million national mortgage servicing settlement fund to provide foreclosure prevention assistance to New Yorkers came to fruition only a few days shy of the fund's expiration date.

The most charitable thing a mortgage company did this year happened when MetLife, a bank holding company, paid for its residential loan officers to receive training and education in preparation for passing their state licensing tests.

Coming off two straight profitable quarters and flush with capital from its recent public stock offering, HomeStreet Bank, a top ranked mortgage lender in the Seattle area, is back in the good graces of its regulators.