Loan Think

Housing markets are showing credible signs of a revival that still is “in the early innings,” according to the State of the Nation’s Housing 2012 report released by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University.

To hear some nonbank lenders talk about the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau you would think they were dealing with Dracula or something.

One thing you can always count on from Washington—there will be plenty of regulatory activity after a crisis happens rather than before when it might be useful.

Regardless of your position on the use of MERS as a nominee for the lender, creating a shared, accessible database of record is another reason why lenders and servicers have worked diligently to certify the accuracy of the data entered in the MERS database.

Costco has started to offer mortgages through approved lenders and heavily marketing the program to its 68 million members.

If CFPB is successful in killing nonbank brokers who’s to say the agency won’t go after nonbank servicers next? That would mean all those REITs buying MSRs might be in danger.

It hasn’t been a good week for the loan brokerage community. On Monday Raj Date, the number two man at the CFPB, in a speech to the American Bankers Association blamed mortgage brokers (more or less) for the housing bust.

The consensus is that short sales are better than foreclosures for many reasons.

According to a report by the National Fair Housing Alliance and four of its local member organizations, some of the larger financial institutions are not handling the maintenance problems in minority neighborhoods as well as they are in predominantly white neighborhoods.

In a speech before the American Bankers Association Monday Consumer Financial Protection Bureau deputy director Raj Date slammed loan brokers for causing the mortgage crisis, raising the ire of at least one loan broker trade group, the National Association of Independent Housing Professionals, which is calling for his resignation.