On May 4, 2016, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Special Inspector General of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP) announced that a California man was found guilty of defrauding over 30,000 homeowners out of $31 million through a large mortgage modification scheme. The defendant was…
On April 25, 2016, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it entered into a settlement agreement with a regional bank over allegations the bank engaged in discriminatory lending practices in violation of the Fair Housing Act. According to HUD, the bank discriminated against racial minorities by refusing…
On April 15, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that a mortgage company settled claims it violated the False Claims Act by originating and underwriting mortgage loans insured by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) Federal Housing Administration (FHA) that failed to comply with certain requirements for the FHA insurance program. The settlement…
On April 14, 2016, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) announced two changes concerning its policies affecting delinquent mortgage loans: first, it announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will offer mortgage principal reductions to certain borrowers who are seriously delinquent and underwater, and second, it announced new enhancements to…
On April 12, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral argument in the first appeal of a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) administrative enforcement ruling, which ordered a mortgage lender to disgorge $109 million for alleged violations of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act…
On April 8, 2016, the Department of Justice (DOJ) officially announced a $1.2 billion settlement with a national bank and one of its executives relating to the bank’s participation in the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) Direct Endorsement Lender Program. As part of the settlement agreement, the bank acknowledged that between the period of May…
On April 1, 2016, the CFPB published its monthly consumer complaint snapshot. See generally, CFPB Monthly Complaint Rep., Apr. 2016. In addition to highlighting trends in consumer complaints received by the CFPB, the April report spotlights mortgage loan-related complaints. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the spotlight shows that 82% of the complaints received…
On April 1, 2016, the California Attorney General announced that it filed suit against a prominent investment bank for alleged “misrepresentations about complex investments such as residential mortgage-backed securities, in which large pools of home loans were packaged together and sold to investors.” The eight-count complaint, which was filed in…
In a March 23, 2016 proposal titled “A More Promising Road to GSE Reform“, several prominent policy commentators recently outlined their suggested plan for reforming the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (Freddie Mac) and the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae), which—according to these analysts—are “two enormously important yet flawed institutions”…
On March 15, 2016, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) announced final changes to its loan-level certification form, 92900-A HUD/VA Addendum to the Uniform Residential Loan Application. The announcement represents important and highly-anticipated changes to the FHA’s required certification. The FHA’s loan-level certification form, which the lender completes for every loan…
On March 16, the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, Inspector General for the Department of Housing and Urban Development (“HUD”), and Acting Inspector General for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) announced that the government settled a False Claims Act lawsuit against a New York-based…
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) announced that it reached an agreement with a regional bank over a disparate treatment fair housing claim. HUD alleged that the bank engaged in racially discriminatory redlining by lending less in the majority-minority neighborhood of the East Side of Kansas City, Missouri….
Do borrowers have standing to challenge a non-judicial foreclosure on the ground of alleged defects in an assignment from the original lender to a successor? This is a question that has divided courts, both in California and across the country. See, e.g., Glaski v. Bank of Am., 218 Cal. App….
On February 18, the Massachusetts Attorney General (“AG”) announced a $4 million settlement with a national mortgage lender and servicer, resolving allegations that the lender received kickbacks for force-placed insurance policies. The AG alleged that, prior to June 1, 2012, the lender received compensation and other kickbacks tied to (already high) force-placed insurance…
States have long imposed fees for recording land records documents, and until recently they have generally done so uniformly, without regard to who the parties to the document might be. The Connecticut Supreme Court has, however, just upheld a statute imposing dramatically higher filing fees for MERS-related documents. In 2013, the…
On February 9, 2016, the Office of the Comptroller of Currency (“OCC”) announced that it has terminated mortgage servicing-related consent orders against two national banks because the banks now comply with the orders. In terminating the consent orders, the OCC assessed a $10 million civil money penalty against the first bank and a $3.4 million civil money penalty against the…
On January 28, 2016, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) published its monthly consumer complaint snapshot, identifying the most recent trends in consumer complaints about various financial products and services. CFPB Monthly Complaint Rep., Jan. 2016, at 1. The report analyzes trends by complaint volume by product, state, and company. Id. at 3-10….
On February 5, 2016, the Department of Justice, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and 49 state attorneys general and the District of Columbia’s attorney general announced a $470 million settlement with a national bank to address alleged mortgage origination, servicing, and foreclosure abuses. …
On February 3, 2016, a national bank announced in its SEC filing that it has reached a $1.2 billion agreement in principle with the United States Department of Justice (“DOJ”), the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California, and…
On January 19, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that it had reached a settlement with a national bank over allegations that the bank discriminated against mortgage loan applicants who had disabilities or received public assistance. The DOJ alleged in its simultaneously filed complaint that the bank violated the Fair Housing…