Compliance & Regulation

Federal Reserve Board Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said Friday the central bank will soon issue a long-awaited package of proposed rules implementing the Dodd-Frank Act.

House and Senate conferees will not restore the $729,750 maximum loan limit on GSE-backed mortgages in high cost areas, sources told National Mortgage News this weekend -- but they have agreed to bump up the limit on Federal Housing Administration loans in lower cost areas.

Not only is the government suing Allied Home Mortgage for FHA fraud, its lawsuit calls into question how company founder and CEO Jim Hodge handled complaints by insiders about its net branch arrangements.

Bank of America's residential servicing department Friday entered into a settlement with the Department of Justice to reimburse members of the military whose homes were foreclosed on while they were on active duty.

The Securities and Exchange Commission could hurt the housing recovery if it imposes tighter restrictions on real estate investment trusts that purchase and securitize mortgages, according to industry comments filed with the agency.

The numerous agencies involved in financial regulation should find better ways to coordinate with each other as they seek to implement the massive Dodd-Frank Act, according to a government watchdog report released Thursday.

The New York banking department has reached an agreement with Morgan Stanley to implement new mortgage servicing standards after signing a similar deal with Goldman Sachs in September.

A new Senate bill proposing to wind down the GSEs by at least 10% a year also includes a provision that would replace the private MERS System with an identical platform run by the Federal Housing Finance Agency -- along with new national standards for mortgage title transfers.

Regulators have identified how borrowers may have been harmed by a multitude of foreclosure errors, but they are largely leaving it to the servicers and their consultants to figure out how to fix it.

A bipartisan group of senators, including Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kay Hagan (D-N.C.), and Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Wednesday sponsored new legislation that would set up a covered bond framework in the U.S.