DSNews The homepage of the servicing industry
The Kroll Bond Rating Agency recently released a study saying it does not believe there will be any GSE reform for the housing finance market until at least 2016 and that lenders and investors should operate as if they do not expect such reform to happen for many years. The Senate and the House of Representatives have both made proposals for the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that include the elimination of one or both of those agencies, but a cohesive bill has yet to reach the President's desk.
The study reported that many changes made since the collapse of U.S. financial markets in 2008 have made it difficult for housing finance to recover and for reform to take place. Once such change was the passage of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act by Congress in 2010. The subsequent creation of the powerful Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has hit mortgage lenders and loan servicers hard with a flurry of regulations, negatively affected the industry it was meant to protect.
The CFPB announced today that it had levied $19.3 million in penalties against Atlanta-based online lender AmeriSave Mortgage Corporation for a bait-and-switch scam that involved falsely advertising low mortgage rates, locking in consumers with costly up-front fees, and illegally overcharging for third party services. The CFPB ordered AmeriSave and its affiliate, Novo Appraisal, to pay $14.8 million in refunds to consumers nationwide and an additional $4.5 million fine. AmeriSave president and CEO Patrick Markert was individually fined $1.5 million.
