Government

Michigan's Oakland and Ingram Counties have filed lawsuits against Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, alleging the GSEs avoided paying the state property-transfer tax on thousands of REO homes by claiming false exemptions. Oakland County says there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of deeds recorded by Fannie and Freddie where they claimed exemptions. Officials maintain the exemptions cost Oakland County at least $250,000 per year.

According to an analysis authored by a former chief economist of Freddie Mac and a real estate economics professor at University of Aberdeen, responsibility for the failure of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac falls directly on regulators and indirectly on their political overseers. The two analysts argue that the U.S. government's involvement in housing finance nurtured the excessively risky loans that fueled the housing bubble of the last decade and resulted in the systemic collapse of the global financial system.

State and federal regulators shut down Mountain Heritage Bank in Clayton, Georgia, late Friday. It's the 14th FDIC-insured financial institution in the state to be closed this year. So far in 2011, 48 insured banks have been shuttered. At this time last year, the tally stood at 86. Mountain Heritage, which was founded in 2003, fell victim to the real estate downturn, with heavy losses on construction loans and mortgages for second homes.

Morgan Keegan & Company and Morgan Asset Management agreed to pay $200 million to settle fraud charges related to subprime mortgage-backed securities (MBS), according to a statement from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The firms, along with two principals, were accused of false valuations related to subprime mortgage securities in five funds from January 2007 to July 2007.

The debate over what constitutes a Qualified Residential Mortgage (QRM) is heating up, with a pivotal argument centered around whether or not the proposed QRM stipulations will actually lower the risk of default. In one corner you have the handful of regulators charged with putting the definition of QRM into the rule book, and in the other corner you have just about everybody else, with consumer advocates joining mortgage bankers in a rare showing, and congressional lawmakers standing firmly alongside them.

CoreLogic has announced the introduction of Verification of Military Status (VOMS), a compliance and loan portfolio due diligence solution. VOMS allows mortgage servicers to identify borrowers protected under the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA), which bans foreclosures and caps interest rate increases for those on active duty and up to 90 days following discharge.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke says its all the distress in the housing sector that's pulling home prices and consumer confidence down and keeping buyers away from the market, despite the fact that the Fed's bond-buying program has succeeded in keeping interest rates low and housing affordable. Bernanke says he'd like to see more efforts to modify loans, but when that's not appropriate, the industry needs to speed up the process of foreclosure and disposition to clear the market.

Servicers have been ordered to institute a clear resolution process for consumer complaints. Accountability when it comes to dealing with distressed borrowers has become a central focus of mortgage servicing reform, but an audit conducted by the Federal Housing Finance Agency's inspector general found that the GSEs' regulator is itself lacking in this area. The report says the agency has let complaints alleging fraud, abuse, and improper foreclosures slip through the cracks with no oversight of their resolution. FHFA says it will take actions to remedy the issue.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said Tuesday that JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay $153.6 million to settle charges that it misled investors in a complex mortgage securities transaction just as the housing market was starting to plummet. JPMorgan noted in a statement that its securities affiliate named in the SEC complaint ultimately lost nearly $900 million in connection with the deal. The SEC, though, says the company failed to disclose that the hedge fund involved in structuring the deal stood to profit if the assets defaulted.

Unemployment has pushed many homeowners to the brink of foreclosure. Housing analysts have become especially vocal about the effect of extended periods of joblessness on mortgage performance. The average duration of unemployment was 40 weeks in May. On Monday, HUD and NeighborWorks announced the roll-out of the Emergency Homeowners' Loan Program (EHLP) to 27 states and Puerto Rico, extending over $800 million to assist homeowners at risk of foreclosure because of a reduction in income.