Tag Archives: The Collingwood Group

With no fundamental changes to the origination process in decades, the lost efficiency, increasing costs and decreasing profits, combined with ever-merging regulatory hurdles, have left a gap in the mortgage industry to be filled by "disruptors," who are innovators creating new business models to better serve the industry.

The cap eliminated by Watt slightly more than a month ago was put in place three years ago by then-acting FHFA director Ed DeMarco as a compromise between satisfying the demand for a reduction in those executive salaries while the GSEs remained under conservatorship of the FHFA and maintaining adequate pay for line staff, according to Rood.

About 75 percent of millennials, commonly known as generation Y, would rather apply for a mortgage loan with a traditional bank as opposed to an alternative lender or nonbank institution, according to the survey, indicating that millennials think more like their parents when it comes to obtaining financing for a first home.

Due to current low interest rates and anticipated appreciation rates for the next few years, homeownership is "one of the last legitimate wealth creation opportunities," according to Tim Rood, chairman of Washington, D.C.-based business advisory firm The Collingwood Group in an interview with Westwood One radio host Dirk Van last week.

On the Obama Administration's recent policy changes intended to give more prospective homebuyers access to credit, Rood acknowledged that the administration wants to responsibly expand the credit box and make homebuying more affordable by lowering the interest rate – but at the same time, he said lenders are compelled by capitalism rather than patriotism to use government programs.

Despite the fact that 89 percent of the mortgage industry professional surveyed by the Collingwood Group last September said regulations were hurting their business, 76 percent of respondents in March's Mortgage Industry Outlook Report said they would be willing to pay up to 25 basis points when asked how much they would pay "to be relieved of all liability for future buybacks, indemnifications and/or lawsuits."

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should take on more risk-sharing transactions, according to a vast majority of survey respondents in the March 2015 Mortgage Industry Outlook Report released Monday by The Collingwood Group and The Five Star Institute.

Longtime housing finance policy expert Bonnie McCloskey has joined Washington, D.C.-based business advisory firm The Collingwood Group as vice president, according to an announcement from the firm.

Mortgage professionals involved with the servicing of Federal Housing Administration (FHA) mortgage loans said the biggest challenge they face with those loans is "fulfillment of FHA property preservation and conveyance requirements," according to the February 2015 Mortgage Industry Outlook Report released Monday by The Collingwood Group and The Five Star Institute. Thirty-nine percent of survey respondents who service FHA loans for their respective companies said that fulfilling fulfilling property preservation requirements was their toughest challenge.

The majority of mortgage industry professionals said they believed that the lowering of the down payment to 3 percent for first-time homebuyers by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a step in the right direction for the housing market, according to the Collingwood Group's November 2014 Mortgage Industry Outlook Report released earlier this week.