National Mortgage News - October 2021

Employees want diverse leadership but change is slow

Minorities are expected to drive future homeownership growth, but the corporate suites have yet to catch up with demographics

Industry professionals share their experiences of racism and sexism on the job and offer the best ways to help eliminate it.

With a huge wave of consolidation expected soon, lenders must carefully adjust their mix of personnel and technology to stay profitable, whether they plan to continue to compete or sell.

The difference between purchase contract prices and valuations was consistently wider than in white neighborhoods, according to a recent analysis of 12 million appraisals from the Uniform Collateral Data Portal.

The filing by Tamara Richards also accused the founder and other execs of encouraging a "frat house" environment that mistreated women.

Changes proposed this week stand to reverse the effect of the Trump-era rule, which disincentivized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac from making such deals, according to critics.

The move generally gets a thumbs up from industry participants, but what can happen in the long-term is uncertain.

The need to size up the impact of hurricanes and pollution is increasing and current measures aren’t as precise as credit or rate models, according to the Research Institute for Housing America.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency slammed the scandal-plagued bank for violating a 2018 consent order and for problems with loss mitigation practices in its home lending division. The bank will also be restricted from acquiring certain residential mortgage servicing rights.

Despite the increase, adjustments to single-family loan terms aimed at making payments more affordable remain historically low at the government-sponsored enterprises. But they could grow in line with forbearance expirations soon.

The decline from 4.4% in July and 6.88% a year ago brings the number much closer to pre-pandemic norms, but foreclosure starts are a different story.

But distressed loans released from backlogs by discontinued foreclosure bans could drive numbers higher eventually, depending on the strength of the housing market

The Department of Housing and Urban Development increased the share of reverse mortgage assets it will give community organizations a first crack at, in line with goals of the Biden administration.

Chief Information Officer Scott Case and his staff are building patent-pending technology to transfer data from legacy BB&T and SunTrust systems to new digital channels while preserving the best of each company's platforms elsewhere.

The technology could help firms that have had less access to automation and generally have conducted trades used to hedge loan pipelines by phone.

Many banks are still making loans tied to the scandal-plagued benchmark despite years of preparation for its demise. The end of 2021 could prove hectic as bankers scramble to implement changes and explain them to commercial borrowers.

At a House Financial Services Committee hearing, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle questioned the widespread practice of screen scraping and agreed that consumers should have a more direct say over how their financial data is handled.