Print Features

The rebound of the mortgage and housing market is good news for all except those who work in the counter-cyclical segments, such as foreclosure and REO services. This print feature originally appeared in the October 2015 issue of DS News magazine.

In response to the financial crisis of 2008, Congress passed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 (“Dodd-Frank”), the most sweeping and comprehensive financial services legislation since the 1930s. This select print feature appeared in the October 2015 issue of DS News.

If the residential valuations industry was a football field, many appraisers would tell you they’re sitting on the 50-yard-line, with no book of plays, no running back, and a star quarterback who is on vacation. Editor's note: This select print feature appeared in the September 2015 issue of DS News.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) gave the mortgage industry quite the surprise on June 24 of this year. Editor's note: This select print feature appeared in the August 2015 issue of DS News.

But a new analysis of the mortgage crisis, which cost millions of families their homes and brought down storied financial institutions such as Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual, suggests prime loans, not subprime, were the major driver and “the crisis was not solely, or even primarily, a subprime sector event.” This select print feature will appear in the August 2015 issue of DS News.

As a mortgage banker, originator or servicer, you may be thinking, “Can the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) interfere with my supplier and service provider relationships?” If you’re asking that question, it is useful to learn more about the CFPB’s vendor oversight expectations. Editor's note: This select print feature is scheduled to appear in the July 2015 issue of DS News, available on July 1.

In fact, the industry discovered that simply analyzing data from the CFPB is not enough, especially since the database arrives with its own built-in bias—that bias being the very nature of the database itself. It collects complaints, not praises, and ignores the larger universe of loans serviced nationwide. To fill the void of well-rounded data, Black Knight Financial Services and the Five Star Institute jumped into the missing space and used data from the CFPB database and its own analytics to inform its latest white paper on CFPB complaints. This select print feature originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of DS News magazine.

Ensuring a well-trained workforce could mean the difference between sinking or swimming in today’s strictly regulated environment. This select feature originally appeared in the May 2015 issue of DS News.

There are multiple levels of regulation in the financial services industry with federal, state, and even local officials supervising companies within the industry. These regulators often cooperate, but also sometimes act in conflict with one another in their pursuit of consumer protection and enforcement of laws. This select print feature originally appeared in the February 2015 issue of DS News magazine.

Today’s housing market barely resembles the market that existed five or even four years ago, much less the environment that was in place when Ginnie Mae was created in 1968 or when it issued the world’s first mortgage-backed security (MBS) in 1970.