Loan Think

What loan officers want from their employer first and foremost is integrity, said Sue Woodard, president, content and publishing at Mortgage Success Source. She was speaking at the Mortgage Bankers Association National Secondary Market Conference in New York in a session called “Powerhouse Production in a Compliance-Driven World.”

Investors will spend what they have to in order to keep REO in marketable condition, but they often work very hard to find asset managers who can sell the property in as close to the condition they find it in as they can. That’s just good business.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is charting the course for new regulation on qualified mortgages, the new QM rule. Their goal is to dissuade lenders from partaking of mortgage loan programs that involve undo risk taking by imposing more stringent underwriting principals to potential loan applicants, including requiring that borrowers show they have the ability to repay a loan.

I have a few coaching clients that amaze me with their discipline and focus. One common denominator is that they try to keep a schedule for marketing and file reviews. I've decided to tackle this and thought I would share my schedule with y'all.

What the heck ever happened to Uncle Sam’s subprime (real estate) lender, Springleaf Financial? Good question.

HARP 2.0 is hot – or so we keep hearing. Late last year the Treasury Department finally found the keys to the HARP kingdom: take the loan-to-value ratio girdle totally off the patient and see what happens.

The lending industry would face “disparate-impact” liability for Fair Housing Act violations under a rule recently proposed by HUD.

In the May issue of Origination News, we published our third annual Top 150 loan originator list. Starting today and over following Mondays, we will be featuring the top five producers for 2011.

In February and January of this year mortgage firms hired 5,500 workers. That’s good news for the industry and shows that residential finance is on the rise again after several rough years of dealing with record delinquencies, sagging home values, tougher regulations, and the general perception that “renting is good.”

On top of the regulations imposed by the CFPB, by Aug. 13, all mortgage banks will need to become compliant with Federal Anti-Money Laundering ("AML") regulations. "FinCEN," the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, created through the Patriot Act in response to the Sept. 11, 2011 attacks, requires lenders (including non-depository institutions) to comply with AML regulations.