MBA Newslinks Archive

“Balancing taxpayer protection, investor returns and consumer costs is critical to realizing a more stable housing finance system going forward.”–From a new MBA paper, GSE Reform: Consumer Costs in a Reformed System, which examines MBA’s plan to build a stable foundation for the secondary mortgage market and how it would impact borrowers in the single-family market.

“Many agency eligible loan programs have been updated so that underwriting parameters for adjustable-rate mortgages more closely align with their existing fixed rate counterparts. In many cases this means higher loan to value ratios on existing ARMs loan programs, which exerted an upward pressure on the MCAI. This change affected conforming loan programs as well as agency jumbo programs, which focus on loans in high cost areas that exceed the baseline conforming loan limit of $424,000 but which are still eligible for purchase by the GSEs.”–MBA Vice President of Research and Economics Lynn Fisher.

“The burden of the one-time costs of implementing the new HMDA reporting requirements can be substantial, and the impact of that cost can be particularly substantial in the case of smaller-volume multifamily lenders. In addition, HMDA reporting of multifamily loans in particular creates the potential for privacy risk for both borrowers and lenders because, depending on the data points the Bureau elects to make public, third parties may be able to identify individual multifamily properties from HMDA data.”–From an MBA letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on proposed changes to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act.

“Borrowing and lending backed by commercial and multifamily properties has been strong the first half of this year…as was the case during the first quarter, commercial/multifamily mortgage bankers’ originations increased despite a slowdown in the volume of sales transactions.”–MBA Vice President of Commercial Real Estate Research Jamie Woodwell.

“The past few years have not been easy for mortgage servicers as they’ve struggled with regulatory and market pressures, but still managed to deliver on customer satisfaction. Now, as that trend starts to shift and customer satisfaction levels off, it is critical that mortgage servicers continue to balance the demands of this tough marketplace with the needs of their customers.”–Craig Martin, senior director of mortgage practice with J.D. Power, Westlake Village, Calif.

“The strongest growth has been concentrated in a handful of markets, mostly in parts of the country with a vibrant tech sector. These areas have tended to experience strong job growth, increased population inflows, soaring rents and robust home price appreciation. These increases are somewhat misleading. Vast areas of the country have seen home prices recover much less.”–Mark Vitner, senior economist with Wells Fargo Securities, Charlotte, N.C.

“The Fed is embarking on a new course. Having given the market plenty of notice that they would begin shrinking their balance sheet holdings of Treasuries and [mortgage-backed securities] this year, following their July meeting, they have now indicated their intention to slow reinvestments in their securities portfolio ‘relatively soon.’ Read that as a signal that they will likely announce at their September meeting that they will begin tapering reinvestments in October.”–MBA Chief Economist Mike Fratantoni.

“We believe that inclusion of such a question would be premature and potentially harmful to a lender or servicer’s relationship with their customer. The borrower might have expectations about service in another language that a lender or servicer cannot provide, or a borrower might erroneously believe the lender intended to discriminate against them or otherwise treat them differently. Neither outcome is consistent with the type of customer service we know MBA members strive to provide.”–MBA Senior Vice President of Legislative and Political Affairs Bill Killmer.

“The ultimate regulator is yourself. Responsible lending starts not with how many regulators you have, but how responsibly you manage and run the organization.”–Sanjiv Das, CEO of Caliber Home Loans, Irving, Texas.

“While the month-to-month fluctuations prevent us from definitively calling this a development slowdown, we can certainly point to a significantly lower growth rate year-over-year in identifying such a trend. Regardless, there will still be plenty of construction and planning activity even with occupancy levels heading toward negative territory.”–STR Senior Vice President of Operations Bobby Bowers.