Mortgages

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.

The Treasury Department’s decision to raise the amount servicers can pay second-mortgage holders for a lien release should give its short sales program a boost, according to an industry expert.

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.

Standard & Poor's reported Tuesday morning that its national home price index fell 2% in the first quarter on a sequential basis.

The NCUA has changed its troubled debt restructuring (TDR) rule to allow credit unions to deem a restructured member mortgage loan current as soon as the loan is closed.

The nation’s megabanks are continuing to sit on their nonperforming residential loans, although some are currently out in the market with mid-sized packages.

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.

A statute long relegated to the environmental regulatory landscape is transforming the way consumer financial regulations are implemented.

The Federal Reserve Board this week released the last details of how two mortgage servicers—Citigroup Inc. and HSBC Finance Corp.—plan to fix problems in their home loan servicing and foreclosure processes.

Credit unions continue their bid to become a real player in the mortgage industry.

Madison Realty Capital, a commercial real estate fund specializing in flexible debt and equity financing, has completed five separate financing and note purchase transactions that totaled $25.6 million.

Lenders are writing off fewer loans because consumers have improved in repaying their debt and there are fewer bankruptcies, Equifax said.

The Supreme Court late this week ruled that federal regulators cannot use RESPA as a price-setting statute to deter lenders and other settlement service providers from charging excessive fees or even “unearned” or bogus fees for which no service is provided.

Fannie Mae hopes to banish banks from any involvement in the purchase of force-placed insurance under a plan to lower the cost of the product.