Tag Archives: Mortgage Disclosures

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau made clear Thursday that it will exercise its full authority to supervise a host of nonbank financial entities, with mortgage originators, brokers, servicers, and others in plain view. The bureau, newly empowered by Richard Cordray├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós recess appointment Wednesday, offered up a video in which the new director addressed a virtual audience Thursday. The bureau released an 800-plus-page manual for nonbank examiners detailing their examination procedures, which focus on an entity├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós volume of business, services, and products.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will clarify and hone rules from 18 consumer financial laws it arrogated from seven federal regulatory agencies in July.

Officials with the White House and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau continue to press critics of the bureau to confirm Richard Cordray as director, notably fronting the wife of Central Intelligence Agency Director Ret. Gen. David Petraeus Thursday. Speaking before the Senate Banking Committee, CFPB Assistant Director Holly Petraeus addressed concerns about the housing market and the effects on service members and their families, ascribing increased hardship to declining home values and difficulties in home sales.

The feud between lawmakers over the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau dragged on Wednesday, as de facto acting director Raj Date defended the struggling agency to Republican House members and the role of the Dodd-Frank Act in financial regulation. Republicans advanced their critiques by highlighting the apparent power of the CFPB director and more compliance workload for financial institutions. Democratic lawmakers played their part by praising the bureau. At other times lawmakers ratcheted up the rhetoric.

Lawmakers and policymakers from both sides of the aisle recently teamed up to head a bipartisan commission on the future of U.S. housing policy. The Bipartisan Policy Center, a D.C.-based nonprofit organization, floated commission leaders whose names include former HUD secretaries Henry Cisneros and Mel Martinez, ex-Sen. Kit Bond, and onetime Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell, who also founded the organization. The commission will finalize the details of these recommendations in a major package for current lawmakers and policymakers.

A U.S. federal judge handed prison sentences and $100 million in fines to two former bank officials and a borrower Thursday for their roles in trying to bilk the Troubled Asset Relief Program during the financial crisis. Former Orion Bank EVP Thomas Hebble and SVP Angel Guerzon, along with onetime borrower Francesco Mileto, received time in federal prison for falsifying information about bad loans under the pretenses that their financial institution qualified for bailout funds from the federal government.

Still-tight credit and failed contracts helped scuttle more hopeful forecasts for total existing-home sales, which fell by 3 percent this month according to NAR's survey.

Mortgage originations are on their way up despite the onset of new rules and regulations, according to a recent survey by MortgageDaily.com. Also included: how top originators thrive in today├â┬ó├óÔÇÜ┬¼├óÔÇ×┬ós tough market. The results? Three-quarters of those polled make $250,000 a year, even as many of the same lenders decry mortgage rules and regulations. Much of the survey's findings follow departures from the industry by major mortgage lenders, grim economic outlooks, and more.

The SEC has filed to recover losses from former bank officials who allegedly concealed massive loan losses for before United Commercial Bank went bust.

A case over unearned mortgage fees reached the desk of the nation's highest judicial authority Tuesday, as the Supreme Court accepted to hear a suit over unearned fees that mortgage lenders allegedly charged their borrowers. The defendant: Detroit-based QuickenLoans, which an amicus curae brief, filed by borrowers in Louisiana, accuses the lender of failing to abide by the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act, the 1974 law responsible for banning financial benefits for lenders and servicers involved in federal loans.