Category: News and Trends

The Mortgage Bankers Association, in a letter to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, urged the Bureau to make changes to its Loan Officer Compensation Rule for clarity and simplicity and to make adjustments so that more creditworthy borrowers can be eligible for Qualified Mortgage loans.

In its 30th annual edition, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies State of the Nation’s Housing Report said while the U.S. housing market appears to be on “sound footing,” opportunities for low-income and medium-income households have worsened, with the gap between white and black homeownership widening further.

The Mortgage Bankers Association and other industry trade groups urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to narrow its definition of financial institutions subject to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act reporting by exempting transactions secured by multifamily properties.

Black Knight, Jacksonville, Fla., said “tappable equity”–the share of home equity available for homeowners with mortgages to borrow against–grew by more than 16 percent from a year ago.

The Union of Concerned Scientists said climate change is putting coastal communities at huge risk–to the tune of more than $1 trillion.

The Mortgage Bankers Association, in a letter last week to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, urged the Bureau to develop, propose, and adopt standards and requirements to govern its own provision of rules and guidance–in essence, a “rule on rules.”

The Federal Housing Finance Agency yesterday issued a proposed rule on capital requirements for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which would implement a new framework for risk-based capital requirements and a revised minimum leverage capital requirement for the government-sponsored enterprises.

CoreLogic, Irvine, Calif., said just 4.3 percent of mortgages were in some stage of delinquency (30 days or more past due, including those in foreclosure) in March, down by 0.1 percent from a year ago.

In a new study by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, Mass., The Empty House Next Door: Understanding and Reducing Vacancy and Hypervacancy in the United States, researcher Allan Mallach said hypervacancy–defined as areas in which at least one in five properties are vacant within a given area–have disrupted neighborhoods and housing markets.

Real estate investment trust property-level fundamentals should remain positive at least through 2018, reported Fitch Ratings, New York.