- HUD releases report of its activities, for instance, to assess its efforts on homelessness, housing vouchers, energy efficiency in multifamily housing.
- The Government Accountability Office releases report, which finds that “qualified mortgage (QM) and qualified residential mortgage (QRM) regulations are unlikely to have a significant effect on the availability or securitization of mortgages in the current market.”
- CFPB releases “2015 Plain Writing Act Compliance Report”, which gives information about what documents executive agencies are required to use plain language in.
- CFPB releases report on eClosings, finding that they can benefit consumers.
Tag Archives: compliance
Optimizing Mortgage Availability
The United States Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report, Mortgage Reforms: Actions Needed to Help Assess Effects of New Regulations. The GAO did this study to predict the effects of the Qualified Mortgage (QM) and Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) regulations. The GAO found
Federal agency officials, market participants, and observers estimated that the qualified mortgage (QM) and qualified residential mortgage (QRM) regulations would have limited initial effects because most loans originated in recent years largely conformed with QM criteria.
- The QM regulations, which address lenders’ responsibilities to determine a borrower’s ability to repay a loan, set forth standards that include prohibitions on risky loan features (such as interest-only or balloon payments) and limits on points and fees. Lenders that originate QM loans receive certain liability protections.
- Securities collateralized exclusively by residential mortgages that are “qualified residential mortgages” are exempt from risk-retention requirements. The QRM regulations align the QRM definition with QM; thus, securities collateralized solely by QM loans are not subject to risk-retention requirements.
The analyses GAO reviewed estimated limited effects on the availability of mortgages for most borrowers and that any cost increases (for borrowers, lenders, and investors) would mostly stem from litigation and compliance issues. According to agency officials and observers, the QRM regulations were unlikely to have a significant initial effect on the availability or securitization of mortgages in the current market, largely because the majority of loans originated were expected to be QM loans. However, questions remain about the size and viability of the secondary market for non-QRM-backed securities.
This last bit — questions about the non-QRM-backed market — is very important.
Some consumer advocates believe that there should not be any non-QRM mortgages. I disagree. There should be some sort of market for mortgages that do not comply with the strict (and, in the main, beneficial) QRM limitations.
Some homeowners will not be eligible for a plain vanilla QM/QRM mortgage but could still handle a mortgage responsibly. The mortgage markets would not be healthy without some kind of non-QRM-backed securities market for those consumers.
So far, that non-QRM market has been very small, smaller than expected. Regulators should continue to study the effects of the new mortgage regulations to ensure that they incentivize making the socially optimal amount of non-QRM mortgage credit available to homeowners.
Reiss on Avoiding War
MaintStreet quoted me in How to Avoid War Between Homeowner Associations and Residents. It reads in part,
When Robert Stern moved into the Sedgefield retirement community in Ocean Isle Beach, N.C. four years ago, all he could see was four golf courses, a pool and club house on multiple wooded acres.
“Our home is on the 14th hole of Lion’s Paw golf course where there is beautiful water lining the green,” Stern told MainStreet. “It is common to see egrets, herons, geese, turtles and other wildlife coming in and out of the area.”
But lurking under the beautiful scenery was the Homeowners Association, which Stern discovered when he left for six months to live in his Nevada retirement home. Stern is among the 63 million Americans living in communities across the country under the jurisdiction of an HOA, according to the Community Association Institute.
“Our property was being neglected and is currently a mess and the dysfunctional Sedgefield Committee won’t take responsibility for not having performed contractual compliance inspections,” said Stern.
“An HOA is a double edged sword,” said David Reiss, professor of real estate with the Brooklyn Law School. “HOAs allow residents to have a lot of sway over their environments but they also make decisions that individual residents don’t like. If you don’t agree with the decision, whether it be over a big or small issue, it can grate no matter what the decision is.”
How to Resolve Disputes
Resolving a dispute with an HOA can involve litigation or joining the club.
“When it comes to the tyranny of the board, we have met the enemy and it is us,” Reiss told MainStreet. “A very effective technique to contest a decision with which you disagree is to run for the board.”
Under most HOAs, boards are elected by residents.
“Those who are willing to do the work end up calling the shots,” Reiss said.
Dodd-Frank Mortgage Rules Readiness Guide
The CFPB issued Version 3.0 of its 2014 CFPB Dodd-Frank Mortgage Rules Readiness Guide “to help financial institutions come into and maintain compliance with the new mortgage rules outlined in Part I of this Guide. . . .. This Guide summarizes the mortgage rules finalized by the CFPB as of August 1, 2014, but it is not a substitute for the rules.” (2)
The Guide provides a helpful overview of the Dodd-Frank rules that relate to the mortgage market, noting that they “amend several existing regulations, including Regulations Z, X, and B.” (3) The guide provides summaries of “rules required under Title XIV of the Dodd-Frank Act” and “the Integrated Mortgage Disclosures under the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) and the Truth in Lending Act (TILA).” (3) These summaries include:
- Ability to Repay
- Qualified Mortgage
- TILA Escrow Requirements
- High-Cost Mortgage and Homeownership Counseling
- Mortgage Servicing
- ECOA Valuations for Loans Secured by a First Lien on a Dwelling
- TILA Appraisals for Higher-Priced Mortgage Loans
- Loan Originator Compensation Requirements
- TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure
While this Guide is directed at financial institutions to help them “come into and maintain compliance” with these rules, it also provides a useful overview for everyone else who is trying to understand what the current regulatory environment for the mortgage market looks like. (2)
Gimme More Mortgage Data!
People are always talking about the value of data about web browsing habits. They don’t talk nearly enough about the value of data about mortgage shopping habits. Regulators and researchers do not know nearly enough about how borrowers and lenders interact in the mortgage business — and the stakes are high, given that a home is often the biggest investment that a household ever makes. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is seeking to make some modest improvements to the federal government’s existing data collection pursuant to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) through a proposed rule.
Under this proposed rule,
financial institutions generally would be required to report all closed-end loans, open-end lines of credit, and reverse mortgages secured by dwellings. Unsecured home improvement loans would no longer be reported. Thus, financial institutions would no longer be required to ascertain an applicant’s intended purpose for a dwelling-secured loan to determine if the loan is required to be reported under Regulation C, though they would still itemize dwelling-secured loans by different purpose when reporting. Certain types of loans would continue to be excluded from Regulation C requirements, including loans on unimproved land and temporary financing. Reverse mortgages and open-end lines of credit would be identified as such to allow for differentiation from other loan types. Further, many of the data points would be modified to take account of the characteristics of, and to clarify reporting requirements for,different types of loans. The Bureau believes these proposals will yield more consistent and useful data and better align Regulation C with the current housing finance market. (79 F.R. 51733)
This seems like a reasonable proposal. It increases the amount of information that is to be collected about important consumer products such as reverse mortgages. At the same time, it releases lenders from having to determine borrowers’ intentions about how they will use their loan proceeds, something that can be hard to do and to document well.
There is more to the proposed rule than this, so take a look at it and consider commenting on it. Comments are due by October 29, 2014.
