Compliance & Regulation

The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week reissued a proposed rule that would reduce by half the maximum allowable seller concessions in an FHA loan transaction to 3%.

Bank of America Thursday afternoon confirmed that it will no longer sell any new purchase money mortgages to Fannie Mae -- though it will remain a HARP lender.

Rejected documents from the county recorder create time delays and decreased efficiencies add up to a cost of billions for the industry with the burden of this cost falling on the current holder(s) of the note. The process of preparing corrections, transporting and re-recording documents will cause double, sometimes triple, the work for employees of those firms.

The text of commitment letters is extremely important and must contain the exact terms and conditions of a loan commitment. It will contain all essential specifics. In order for one to generate an effective commitment letter, one must have a clear understanding of all the terms. To get there, it is often desirable to start with a term sheet.

Two Marlboro, N.J. residents - an attorney and an investment broker - this week pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to steal more than $2.6 million by filing fraudulent mortgage applications.

Marc Savitt is someone we call a "homer" - a fan who roots for the home team and in this case that home team happens to be mortgage brokers. Savitt, the former head of NAMB, has long believed that the brokerage sector would come back (at least to some degree) and that we would see a trend toward nonbank and depository loan officers switching over to broker status.

Vendor ClosingCorp said Thursday it is making available a service that helps credit unions handle good faith estimate disclosures.

The acting commissioner of the Federal Housing Administration this week blasted news reports that claim Bank of America Corp. was essentially bailing out the agency's mortgage insurance fund.

Woodward Asset Capital has made technological advancements to their two software solutions enabling small banks to have the capability to access these tools to monitor fraudulent activities in the distressed sales marketplace.

An upcoming legal decision related to whether a proposed $8.5 billion Countrywide RMBS settlement returns to New York state court could affect the speed at which a deal moves forward — or whether it happens at all, according to a new report from Barclays.