Origination

When he first came up with the concept for LenderCity Home Loans just before the turn of the century, Gregg Harris ended up being a few years ahead of his time.

Back in the year 2000, when Franklin Raines held the title of chairman and chief executive officer of Fannie Mae, Rep. Richard Baker, R-La., sponsored the Housing Finance Regulatory Improvement Act. This bill not only asked for increased oversight over Fannie and Freddie but also recommended unifying the regulation of Fannie and Freddie under one roof.

Regulators’ efforts to strengthen the oversight of the shadow U.S. banking system, which plays an important role in mortgage-backed securities financing, appear to be paying off.

Originators have been linking loan origination systems that don’t have certain e-mortgage capabilities to everything from document management systems and e-signature technology to electronic fax-receiving automation in the slow but inexorable transition toward the e-mortgage, something that is about to take another small but significant step forward this year.

SunTrust Mortgage hired former MetLife Home Loans executive Linda Steiner as a regional wholesale manager based in the Pacific Northwest area.

A check by Housing Intelligence of median prices of all homes sold in January in markets with at least 2,000 closings finds that the top five were all in Florida.

There has been a ton of confusion surrounding the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 37 pages of rule making on mortgage compensation. We just want to point out that the rule is far from settled.

For years, the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement Fairness Act had applied only to the Environmental Protection Agency and, more recently, to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.The Dodd-Frank Act extended the law to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, requiring for the first time that a financial regulator meet with small institutions before proposing any rule that would significantly impact them.

Abhinav Asthana of Wipro Gallagher Solutions discusses mobile technology security concerns.

Over the past 18 months REITs have raised $26 billion in new equity. Almost all of it has been targeted toward MBS investments. Very little has been plowed into mortgage servicing rights.