If mortgage professionals feel like it’s hunting season on them, they have every right. Everywhere they look it appears that someone in government is trying to over-regulate their business, or sue them for alleged misdeeds that happened during the mortgage industry of yesteryear (pre-2008.) We recently reported that the Inspector General’s office of the Federal Housing Finance Agency is taking a look at seller/servicers that may’ve sold ‘materially deficient’ mortgages to the GSEs. Also, the Treasury Department last week unveiled a new plan to wind down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac even faster, forcing them to sell assets out of their retained portfolios at a heightened rate. But the problem with forced liquidations is this: if a seller (a GSE for example) has to unload bonds with a gun held to their head that means they won’t be getting maximum value. (Who does this serve?) Meanwhile, according to one mortgage analyst, there are legal concerns that if a loan officer discovers he/she is being paid under an improper LO comp plan, then that LO is personally responsible under the Dodd-Frank Act. Stay tuned.
