Risk management

Several civil rights and community development groups wrote Tuesday to urge the Federal Housing Finance Agency to recapitalize Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

The CFPB alleges that David Eghbali, a loan officer for a Wells Fargo branch in Beverly Hills, Calif., developed a scheme to manipulate escrow fees in order to close more mortgages and boost his bonus. Eghbali says he was forced to sign a settlement because he couldn't afford to fight the CFPB in court.

The Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development is not backing down on his concerns about premium pricing associated with the down payment assistance programs by the Federal Housing Administration.

The bank's new low-down-payment mortgage, an alternative to FHA loans, dispenses with the complex qualification requirements that have hampered recent efforts with low down payments by Fannie and Freddie.

New research findings challenge common assumptions about borrower behavior, illustrating how trended data — something mortgage lenders will soon be required to collect — could be a game-changer.

The secondary marketing agency wants to model how servicers' available cash might stand up to shocks because interruptions to that liquidity have been a common problem among those that failed.

Now that it has the green light to expand its role in multifamily housing, Freddie Mac is looking at more ways to shift the credit risk on apartment building mortgages that it insures.

Two recent court rulings affirmed that lenders can enforce electronically signed and transferred notes, laying important groundwork for wider adoption of electronic mortgage technology that could improve the customer experience for borrowers and save lenders and servicers a bundle.

The experience of updating systems and overhauling workflows that mortgage lenders gleaned from implementing the TILA-RESPA integrated disclosures could prove useful to portfolio lenders as they implement a similarly complex accounting rule for reporting credit losses.

The Indianapolis Federal Home Loan Bank rewarded 43 of its members with a $761,000 payout in May for the performance of their mortgages in an aggregated pool.

Russia's moving into mortgage bonds to try to cut housing costs, and it's taking a leaf out of America's book to do so.

This summer, Freddie Mac will start rolling out a suite of tools that should speed sales of loans to the GSE. Relief from reps and warranties will take longer, however.

The June 25 launch, which will provide lenders with much more information about a borrower's credit history, will mark the first widespread use of trended data in the mortgage industry.

The government-sponsored enterprises' risk-sharing deals are being hailed as an innovative approach for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to offload credit exposure to private markets. But their growing popularity is raising questions about how these transactions should be reported in financial statements.

Credit access and homeownership for low- to moderate-income families are under siege by the DOJ's overuse of the False Claims Act, as lenders worried about punitive damages discontinue Federal Housing Administration loan programs.

After the Home Affordable Modification Program ends, servicers will employ myriad proprietary workout options to meet ongoing compliance requirements. But will more discretion in loss mitigation practices create consumer and investor confusion?

Going forward, Fannie Mae will be relying more on loan guarantee fee income from its single-family and multifamily businesses.

Borrowers who have defaulted in the past are generally considered to be a bigger risk than those who have never missed a payment. Yet the early performance of bonds backed by rehabbed residential mortgages is pretty strong.

Freddie Mac's second quarterly loss in less than a year makes it clear profitability is getting tougher as it shrinks. But it's a concern that must be weighed against more long-term efforts to reduce Freddie's overall credit risk exposure.

Servicing rights are high-yielding assets, making them attractive investments for hedge funds, real estate investment trusts and banks.