Category: Top National News

Scotsman Guide, Apr. 23, 2018–Victor WhitmanThe bill would require the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director to issue legally binding guidance. The Mortgage Bankers Association and other industry groups have long complained that the bureau has left companies to interpret civil judgments and consent orders when companies are punished for wrongdoing, and that the bureau only has published informal advice in select cases.

American Banker, Apr. 23, 2018–Kate Berry (subscription)Acting Director Mick Mulvaney has said hundreds of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau-related data breaches justified his announcement in December that the agency would halt collecting personally identifiable information from companies it supervises. But industry experts say such a data freeze is unusual in the government; more unusual, they say, is that the CFPB apparently resumed data collection after only a few weeks, without investigating or remedying the cybersecurity problems that it identified.

Wall Street Journal, Apr. 23, 2018–Richard Rubin (subscription)Meet the new mortgage-interest deduction. It’s smaller and much more concentrated among high-income households. In 2018, the deduction will save taxpayers $25 billion, down from $60 billion in 2017, according to estimates released on Monday by the Joint Committee on Taxation.

National Mortgage News, Apr. 23, 2018–Brad Finkelstein (subscription)In 2016 the FHA denial rate among all minority groups was 14.4%. At the same time, the difference in denial rates between whites and minorities for conventional mortgages also grew over the same period.

Los Angeles Times, Apr. 20, 2018–James Rufus KorenThe penalty, announced by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is the largest levied against a financial firm since President Trump took office and one of the largest against any U.S. bank not related to the financial crisis.

CNN, Apr. 22, 2018″It’s a different world now,” says Sara Singhas, associate regulatory counsel at the Mortgage Bankers Association, referring to the recent departure from rock-bottom interest rates. “Especially for people who are performing on their loans, we wanted to make sure we don’t put them into a worse financial position than they were prior to the disaster.”

Wall Street Journal, Apr. 20, 2018–Thomas Gryta (subscription)General Electric Co. reported a quarterly loss on a $1.5 billion charge related to a subprime mortgage business it once owned, but executives said they were making progress on their efforts to turn around its industrial businesses.

Wall Street Journal, Apr. 20, 2018–Laura Kusisto, Arian Campo-Flores (subscription)MIAMI-Concerns over rising sea levels and floods are beginning to reshape one of the country’s largest housing markets, with properties closer to sea level now trading at discounts to those at higher elevations.

HousingWire, Apr. 20, 2018–Ben LaneThe company announced Friday that it is acquiring ClickPay, an electronic payment platform servicing 2.3 million units across the multifamily, HOA, condominium and co-op segments of real estate, in a $218 million deal.

MarketWatch, Apr. 19, 2018–Andrea RiquierA survey published by the New York Fed this week sheds some light on how homeowners think about their mortgage payments when they’re underwater–or at least how they say they think about it.