Loan Think

With all of the debate over health care in this country, there is one tried and true way for employers to keep down their costs in this area—taking an active interest in the health and well being of your workers. For businesses like mortgage origination, which have tight operating margins, saving money in the area of health care adds to the bottom line.

For a year now the government owned Ally Financial has kept mum on the idea of throwing ResCap into bankruptcy protection but the self imposed gag order came off late Friday night, squirreled away in the folds of a new 148-page SEC filing.

Field service companies have put more emphasis on pre-sale mitigation, auditing the work they complete, and concentrating on other ways to protect the value of REO properties in pre-sale in the future.

By now, thousands of readers have viewed our coverage (both in print and online) of eWarehouseOne, the mysterious warehouse lender that appears to have collected at least $250,000 in application and good faith checks, and doesn’t have a whole lot of lines of credit to show for it. After two months of investigating the company and talking to roughly 20 sources, we’ve come to the conclusion that the man running the show is Tom Reynolds, once listed as EVP in charge of warehouse lending. The problem is this: none of the account executives hired by the company (some of whom have left) have ever met Reynolds, though they’ve spoken to him on the phone.

Many loan officers have been in the mortgage business forever (10 years seems to be the norm). Some have been in the business only for a short period of time. They’ve learned by doing—taking licensing courses, intra-company training, etc. But have you “mastered” your job to the best of your ability?

It’s no secret that the mortgage industry – after hearing from its customers – is clamoring for a HARP 3.0 refi solution for underwater loans that are not guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But how do we get there?

Last week, the CFPB issued a compliance bulletin confirming that it would follow the disparate impact theory in advancing claims of discriminatory lending practices. The importance of the disparate impact theory is that it does not require a showing of intentional discrimination. Rather, it simply requires the government to show that a lender’s policies and/or practices resulted in a discriminatory outcome-regardless of the intent.

I'm busy. And sometimes it is easy to forget to do the small things that can make a big difference in our business relationships. It doesn't have to be an extra mile—do the small things on a regular basis and you will deepen your referral relationships.

The formation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the subsequent melding of responsibility for stronger consumer protections have added a greater dimension of regulatory accountability for supervised banks, nonbanks and the third-party service providers they utilize. It means keeping an eye on a few things.

Getting licensed to be a mortgage loan officer is simple – or so some readers have told us. But we’ve also heard stories about failure rates in some states approaching 40%.