Compliance

The clash between the Department of Housing and Urban Development and its inspector general over down payment assistance programs run by state or local housing finance agencies continues to heat up.

Despite their major push to overhaul the housing finance market last Congress, Sens. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Mark Warner, D-Va., offered little optimism Tuesday that structural reform is on its way anytime soon.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development launched a new ethics program that will support whistleblower, ombudsman and hotline initiatives.

If we can't identify adequate capital to bear mortgage credit losses when they are incurred, aren't we setting ourselves up for another series of bailouts in the next housing downturn?

The Justice Department said that members of the military whose properties were wrongfully foreclosed are eligible to receive a total of $311 million in compensation from five large mortgage servicers.

The Mortgage Bankers Association is disappointed that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has not provided an explicit temporary safe harbor for lenders who have made a good-faith effort to implement new disclosures.

Rebecca Mairone scarcely deserves a mention in the annals of finance, except for this: She's the only executive of a major U.S. mortgage lender found liable for her part in the 2008 financial crisis.

WASHINGTON — Federal examiners will expect institutions to show that they made a "good faith" effort in preparing for the implementation of the new integrated mortgage disclosures that go into effect on Oct. 3, regulators said in letters sent to industry groups on Thursday.

The long-delayed approval of the merger of M&T and Hudson City should have been a bright spot in postcrisis M&A, but a small footnote from the Fed quickly reminded bankers that dealmaking will remain a demanding process.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is planning to issue a final rule in the next 12 months to require Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to better serve underserved markets, including manufactured housing, the agency said Thursday.

JPMorgan Chase has paid off $3.56 billion of the $4 billion it owes in consumer relief credit as part of a 2013 settlement over marred mortgage-backed securities issued before the crisis.

A handful of moderate Democrats are supporting a controversial bill to restructure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and are expected to help the House Financial Services Committee approve the legislation.

If the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau provides lenders with a hold harmless period, it must also include protections to keep lenders from facing future lawsuits related to TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosures compliance.

Community bankers merit more regulatory relief, particularly those that hold mortgage originations. That was a key message from James Bullard, St. Louis Fed President, during a community banking conference in St. Louis hosted by the Federal Reserve Board and the Conference of State Bank Supervisors.

The Federal Reserve Board has approved the merger of M&T Bank and Hudson City Bancorp after more than three years of delay. The approval came on the day the regulator had set as a deadline to announce its verdict on the deal.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is working with other regulators on examiner guidance to help ensure that the agencies enforce new mortgage disclosures in a "corrective" manner, not a "punitive" one, Director Richard Cordray said Tuesday.

A bipartisan group of housing experts is seeking to inject more discussion about the mortgage market into presidential campaigns.

The key to housing finance reform is a new securitization model that allows the private sector to price and absorb the majority of housing credit risk.

The most recent outcry came from four housing groups that warned lawmakers last week that the proposal by the Federal Housing Finance Agency "would make harmful changes" to the FHLB membership rules.

It's hard to decide which is more surprising: that the largest U.S. bank has almost abandoned the business of making home loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration, that lots of big banks could be right behind it, or that the FHA might not even need to care.