Compliance

"Oppressive." "Harsh." "Micro-managing." These were some descriptions community bankers were using in congressional hearings last year to describe their safety and soundness exams. But it appears the bank-examiner relationship has started to change dramatically.

The next step needed to improve the integrity of values in appraisal management is a set of scores for not only the valuations themselves, but also appraisers and specific areas.

Visit the office of John O'Brien, register of deeds in South Essex County, Massachusetts, and he'll eagerly show you stacks and stacks of documents. He calls it a crime scene.

Fitch CMBS stress tests show that relatively high percentages of top-rated securities that go through a sharp double-dip recession would keep those ratings intact.

Two Northern California real estate investors agreed to plead guilty for their roles in a conspiracy to rig bids and commit mail fraud at public real estate foreclosure auctions.

For the past two years, Valley National Bancorp in Wayne, N.J., has touted its $499 home refinance program in New Jersey and Pennsylvania—but there is fine print.

If you’re wondering why the nonperforming loan auction market hasn’t been more robust – especially given the fact that banks and the GSEs are sitting on billions of dollars in defaulted home mortgages – you can blame accounting rules, or so we’re told.

Fannie Mae is moving closer to launching a pilot program to dispose of some of its nonperforming residential loans.

Mortgage investors, who have been complaining for months about the costs they will bear under the national servicing settlement, presented a list of proposed remedies at a congressional hearing.

According to the DOJ’s investigation, SunTrust violated the Fair Housing Act and Equal Credit Opportunity Act by charging more than 20,000 African American and Hispanic borrowers higher fees and interest rates based on their race and not on borrower risk.

Multiplying federal and state regulation has triggered the issuance of new rules and requirements further down the chain at the local level and is pressuring mortgage banks to find new ways to stay in compliance.

New technology and approaches are making automated valuation models more accurate.

Federal prosecutors Wednesday accused Washington Council chairman Kwame R. Brown with mortgage fraud, saying he lied on his home mortgage application as part of a scheme to buy a $50,000 power boat.

A higher number of conduit loans that back U.S. commercial mortgage-backed securities are being liquidated, and at a lower average loss severity rate. But as special servicers try to manage vintage deals more losses are expected this year and the next.

Lenders and servicers must meet Fannie’s requirement to satisfy homeowners-association claims on certain distressed properties by July 1 in order to preserve their first-lien position.

Appraisal management is still not perfect but it continues to improve, and it has come a long way from where it was just a few years ago, according to Judy Wheatley, a senior vice president at Indecomm.

An executive at a real estate investment trust that invests in agency and nonagency MBS said proposed credit risk-sharing opportunities with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are among the type of investments his firm would like to buy into.

Any successor to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should be structured as a cooperative which would prevent Wall Street firms or megabanks from controlling access to the secondary mortgage market.

A FINRA panel is taking action against Brookstone Securities and three individuals connected to the company, alleging CMO fraud.

Assembly Bill 2610, sponsored by Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley), and Senate Bill 1473, sponsored by Loni Hancock (D-Berkeley), will require purchasers of foreclosed homes to give tenants at least 90 days before starting any eviction proceedings.