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A court tossed out a regulation written by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for payday lenders last week, saying the agency's funding was unconstitutional and that it, therefore, lacked the ability to curb the industry. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit voided a CFPB rule that prohibited payday lenders from debiting the accounts of customers who miss a payment without getting their consent first. While the ruling applied just to that regulation, financial service attorneys say it muddies the agency's authority and has the potential to upend all of its rules. "The Fifth Circuit's ruling potentially calls...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today released its January 2013 Refinance Report, which shows that refinance volume remained high through the first month of this year. There were nearly 470,000 refinances in January, with roughly 97,600 completed through the Home Affordable Refinance Program (HARP). This brings total HARP refinances to more than 2.2 million since the program’s inception in April 2009. • Borrowers in January with loan-to-value ratios greater than 105 percent accounted for 47 percent of the HARP refinance volume. • The number of completed HARP refinances for deeply underwater borrowers continued to represent a significant portion of...

Fannie Mae — the much-hated, government-backed entity that needed a massive bailout and gets accused of inflating the housing bubble -- just reported its biggest annual profit in history.From the announcement that came out this morning:Fannie Mae (FNMA/OTC) today reported annual net income of $17.2 billion for 2012 and quarterly net income of $7.6 billion for the fourth quarter of 2012, compared with a net loss of $16.9 billion for 2011. The improvement in the company’s full-year and quarterly net income was due primarily to improved credit results driven by a decline in serious delinquency rates, an increase in home...

The housing market in the US is improving (after wandering in the economic desert since 2008). It has been a slow recovery, but is getting some legs from investors buying discounted foreclosures. And foreign investors. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA), mortgage applications rose by +7.66% SA from the previous week. Mortgage purchase applications rose 6.67% while refinancing applications from 7.98%. Over the past year, we saw the seasonal pattern where mortgage applications began slowing after Spring culminating in a plunge between Christmas and January 1st. But since January 1st, mortgage purchase applications have been increasing. But if we...

The home mortgage sector in the world’s largest economy has been “effectively nationalized,” says George Melloan, former deputy editor of the editorial page for The Wall Street Journal. Government agencies — primarily Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but also the Federal Housing Administration — insured or purchased more than 90 percent of home mortgages originated in 2012, a $1.3 trillion business, compared with 30 percent in 2006, according to ProPublica data. Melloan, author of “The Great Money Binge: Spending Our Way to Socialism,” traced the situation back to the end of the last century, citing government and “powerful” lobbies. Editor's...

WATERLOO, Iowa --- Nearly 1,000 Waterloo jobs may be on the line in the wake of a decision by bankrupt mortgage company Residential Capital LLC, the parent company of GMAC Mortgage, to sell assets to two firms for $3 billion. On Wednesday the board of directors of New York-based ResCap granted preliminary approval to a $3 billion bid from the team of Ocwen Loan Servicing LLC and Walter Investment Management Corp. for the company’s mortgage servicing and origination business. ResCap and 50 of its subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in May. The bankruptcy court will consider the proposed...

I'm looking for help with a real estate issue, and I was hoping a Freeper with some knowledge of real estate can help me. I'm researching the ownership history of a residential property, and I've come across a formal record in a county office indicating that the last mortgage on the property has been discharged through a company called "Mortage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc." I know this was not the lender, and I can find no record anywhere indicating that this company has ever held a title on the property. Some research I've done online indicates that this company is...

A landmark ruling in a recent Kansas Supreme Court case may have given millions of distressed homeowners the legal wedge they need to avoid foreclosure. In Landmark National Bank v. Kesler, 2009 Kan. LEXIS 834, the Kansas Supreme Court held that a nominee company called MERS has no right or standing to bring an action for foreclosure. MERS is an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, a private company that registers mortgages electronically and tracks changes in ownership. The significance of the holding is that if MERS has no standing to foreclose, then nobody has standing to foreclose – on...

WASHINGTON (Dow Jones/AP) -- House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., has secured two key Republican endorsements on his legislative plan to reform the mortgage industry, avoiding a potentially bruising political fight this week. Rep. Spencer Bachus, R-Ala., the panel's top Republican, and Rep. Judy Biggert, R-Ill., another high-ranking member, have both signed on as co-sponsors to an amended bill that Frank plans to introduce before a committee vote on Tuesday. "The most important fact about this compromise is that it has significant new safeguards to protect families from abusive lending," Bachus, who has long advocated for change in...