Mortgage Lending – Page 3 – Consumer Financial Services Watch

TRID/KBYO Rule: The CFPB Tries to Calm Lender Fears

Dec 30 2015

On December 29, 2015, CFPB Director Richard Cordray responded to MBA President and CEO David Stevens’ desperate plea for clarity to address what the MBA claimed is a significant rejection by large aggregators and investors of correspondent lending channel loans for minor or technical TRID errors. In its December 21, 2015 letter to Director Cordray, Mr. Stevens noted that these minor and technical errors include “issues with the alignment or shading of forms, rounding errors, time stamps with the wrong time zone, or check boxes that are improperly completed on the LE.” The MBA feared that without some clarity from the CFPB disruption and liquidity issues would overwhelm the mortgage markets.

Is the CFPB Coming After Marketplace Lenders?

Nov 24 2015

The CFPB recently released its fall 2015 Rulemaking Agenda, which suggests that the CFPB may be looking to exert its supervisory authority over certain marketplace lenders. If that is in fact the case, it would represent the agency’s first foray into this rapidly-developing credit marketplace.

The Rulemaking Agenda is released twice a year — in the spring and fall — and is where the CFPB identifies its rulemaking priorities for the short and long term. The fall Agenda contains a list of the various substantive rulemakings already underway at the CFPB — involving arbitration provisions, payday lending, prepaid accounts, overdrafts, debt collection, mortgage servicing, and the statutorily-required rule on women-owned, minority-owned, and small businesses data collection. These have all been publicly discussed by the CFPB before, and so they are no surprise. Read More

Some California Lenders May Now Pay Finder Fees to Unlicensed Referral Sources

Nov 05 2015

By: Jon Jaffe, Jeremy M. McLaughlin

California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed two bills into law that will provide Finance Lender licensees with greater flexibility in the ways in which they can obtain loan leads. One bill broadens the category of people who may refer commercial loan customers to licensees, and the other expands the role of a finder for certain unsecured loans. Both bills take effect in January 2016.

GSEs Release Revised Framework for Origination Defects and Remedies — The Proof Will Be in the Execution

Oct 21 2015

By: Laurence E. Platt, Jennifer A. Overall

By recently releasing yet another revised representation and warranty framework, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac continued their efforts to assuage the concerns of the lending industry that a default by a borrower poses an unfair risk of a loan repurchase demand. On October 7, 2015, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the “GSEs”), at the direction of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (“FHFA”), announced a framework for origination defects and remedies (the “Framework”) that expands on existing frameworks governing the rights and responsibilities of lenders that sell or securitize loans to or with the GSEs. For example, permitting repricing or cure in lieu of the remedy of repurchase represents a concession by the GSEs. Nevertheless, the language of the new Framework is ambiguous enough that one may have to rely on the GSEs’ apparent spirit of good intentions rather than the precision of their language to take total comfort in the changes.

To read the full alert, click here.

HUD Withdraws Proposal to Establish Claim Filing Deadline

Oct 16 2015

By: Krista Cooley, Kathryn Baugher

Servicers of mortgage loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration (“FHA”) can breathe a sigh of relief—at least for now. Today, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”) withdrew part of a recently proposed regulation that would have required FHA-approved servicers to file a claim for FHA insurance benefits within a certain period of time or else face termination of the FHA insurance policy. HUD stated that it withdrew the proposal to establish a claim filing deadline “[i]n response to public comments expressing concern over the implementation of the proposed provisions[.]”

Push Them Back, Shove Them Back, Way Back

Oct 15 2015

By: Laurence E. Platt

From the October 2015 issue of Mortgage Banking magazine, with permission from the Mortgage Bankers Associate (MBA).

Despite the opposition of major consumer and industry groups, the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws adopted the proposed Uniform Home Foreclosure Procedures Act in July. There is much to like in the Act, such as limiting local governments from regulating foreclosures, expediting foreclosures for abandoned properties and extinguishing junior liens in short sales. Outweighing these potential benefits, however, are the likely material delays in, and increased costs of, foreclosure resulting from the imposition of “foreclosure resolution” requirements and assignee liability for origination errors. Individual state legislatures must now evaluate whether to enact the Act in whole, in part or not at all, in light of the anticipated active opposition from stakeholders.

To read the article, click here.

CFPB Publishes Major Changes to HDMA

Oct 15 2015

By: Melanie Brody, Christopher Shelton

Today, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued a final rule that makes significant amendments to its Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (“HMDA”) regulations. The final rule is available here.

At 797 double-spaced pages, the final rule is almost half the length of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule, which came into effect earlier this month. Institutions will have to devote significant attention to digesting and implementing all the new HMDA requirements. The new requirements come into effect in three phases, starting in January 2018, January 2019, and January 2020.

K&L Gates will be circulating a client alert shortly, followed by a webinar, to help institutions navigate this complex final rule.

Key Takeaways From the CFPB’s and DOJ’s Redlining Settlement With Hudson City Savings Bank

Sep 25 2015

By: Melanie Brody, Anjali Garg

On Thursday, September 24, 2015, the CFPB and DOJ filed a complaint and proposed consent order against Hudson City Savings Bank (“Hudson City”) alleging violations of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Fair Housing Act. The complaint alleges that Hudson City discriminated against Black and Hispanic borrowers by redlining majority-Black-and-Hispanic neighborhoods (defined in the consent order as a census tract in which more than 50 percent of the residents are identified in the 2010 U.S. Census as either “Black or African American” or “Hispanic or Latino”) in its residential mortgage lending in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. The complaint alleges that Hudson City engaged in redlining through its (1) location of branches and loan officers, (2) exclusion of Black and Hispanic census tracts from its Community Reinvestment Act (“CRA”) assessment area, (3) use of brokers outside of majority Black and Hispanic neighborhoods, (4) marketing directed at neighborhoods with relatively few minority residents, and (5) exclusion of residents from majority-minority counties from discounted home improvement loans for borrowers with low to moderate incomes.

Recent Legislative Developments Will Create Headaches and Increase Financial Risks for Mortgage Servicers and Originators

Jul 24 2015

By: J. Stephen Barge, Kenneth S. Wear, Christine M. Green

Two recent legislative developments, which have largely gone unnoticed, will dramatically raise the stakes for mortgage servicers and originators who file IRS Forms 1098. First, the Trade Preferences Extension Act of 2015, signed into law on June 29, 2015, more than doubled the financial penalties imposed for filing IRS Forms 1098 with incorrect information. Second, proposed legislation approved by the Senate Finance Committee on July 21, 2015 to extend certain expired tax provisions (a so-called “extenders bill”) would require servicers to include new information on IRS Form 1098. Although the extenders bill’s new required information may be relatively straightforward in basic situations, delinquent and modified loans present unique challenges. With the new increased penalties in place, the stakes to get it right have never been higher. Because there is scant IRS guidance upon which servicers may rely regarding various information reporting issues, it will be increasingly critical for the IRS to adhere to the legal standard that penalties do not apply when a servicer adopts and follows reasonable reporting methods in good faith.

DOJ and CFPB Settle Discriminatory Mortgage Pricing Case with Wholesale Lender

Jun 01 2015

By: Melanie Brody, Anjali Garg

On May 28, 2015, the DOJ and the CFPB filed a complaint and proposed consent order against Provident Funding Associates (Provident) alleging that the mortgage lender violated the Fair Housing Act and ECOA by charging African American and Hispanic borrowers higher broker fees than it charged white borrowers. To resolve these claims, Provident will pay $9 million to approximately 14,000 borrowers who allegedly paid higher interest rates and/or fees for mortgages between 2006–2011. The agencies did not impose a civil money penalty against Provident.

Catagory:Mortgage Lending