Government

The Housing and Insurance Subcommittee of the House Committee on Financial Services will hold the second hearing in the series, entitled The Future of Housing in America: Oversight of the Federal Housing Administration, Part II, on Thursday, February 26, beginning at 10 a.m. Eastern time.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is still refinancing plenty of loans through Home Affordable Refinance Program ‒‒ in fact more HARP refinances were done in December than in any other month of 2014 ‒‒ but HARP refinances are significantly down from a year ago, even if FHFA believes it has many more potential customers out there.

The American Enterprise Institute's (AEI) International Center on Housing Risk reported another rise in mortgage origination risk in January, marking five straight months of increasingly risky lending. Researchers at the center say the rise in risk is due to a shift in market share from large banks to non-banks, whose practices are "substantially riskier than the large bank business."

U.S. Representative Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), along with U.S. Representative Tim Walz (D-Minnesota), re-introduced the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection Act of 2015, a bill that would create the position of an independent Inspector General for CFPB.

The Collingwood Group, a business advisory firm based in Washington, D.C., announced Tuesday that veteran housing finance policy expert Bonnie McCloskey has joined the company as VP.

Homebuilders broke ground on new homes at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.07 million in January, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. January's rate of new construction was 2.0 percent below December's revised estimate of 1.09 million units annually but 18.7 percent above the year-ago pace of 897,000 units.

Attorney General Eric Holder has given U.S. attorneys across the country 90 days to judge whether or not they want to bring cases against specific individuals for their alleged roles in 2008's mortgage crisis, according to reports.

More than one in three homeowners with mortgages backed by the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) could stand to save money by refinancing now that the agency has lowered its annual mortgage insurance premium, according to a study released by the Urban Institute (UI).

Georgia's Department of Banking and Finance took possession of Capitol City Bank & Trust Company on Friday, citing the bank's "unsound condition" as a result of losses on real estate loans. Despite receiving help to shore up its capital, it was unable to recover following the financial crash.

The hearing, entitled "Regulatory Relief for Community Banks and Credit Unions," was a gathering of the committee's lawmakers to discuss the effect of recent regulatory burdens placed on smaller banks and credit unions in response to the financial crisis.