Mortgage Industry

Re "Aid on home loans sought," Feb. 26 Canceling out the concept of a contract because some people are not willing to really consider what it means to sign their names to a mortgage is ridiculous. A mortgage isn't a bankruptcy proceeding. The contract to pay back the loan is backed by the property -- the property is the guarantee. That many thousands of people could not afford to buy the homes that they purchased and are now losing them as a result is not a justification to wreck the mortgage contract instrument for everyone else.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering new rules on mortgage fees, including banning origination charges based on the size of the loan. The agency, which said the new rules would make it easier for potential home buyers to understand and compare mortgages, also is proposing that brokers and loan officers undergo criminal background checks and go through special training. The preliminary proposals, unveiled Wednesday, also would prohibit incentives to steer consumers into higher priced loans.

sacramento -- Lawmakers and lenders called on the state's troubled home mortgage industry Tuesday to step up efforts to help financially strapped Californians avoid losing their homes to foreclosure. But they stopped well short of endorsing calls from consumer groups for a moratorium on foreclosures -- now at a 20-year high. "Legislative efforts to intervene in the market are not the answer," said state Sen.

Should being pregnant and taking maternity leave ever be reasons to be turned down for a home mortgage or having your loan closing postponed? You might think not, but two new legal actions by federal fair lending regulators suggest that the mortgage industry — and even federally run financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — may need to address the issue. In one case, a Seattle-area physician settled a discrimination complaint with Cornerstone Mortgage Co., a national mortgage banking firm based in Houston.

Seeking to prevent a repeat of the current mortgage crisis, the House approved Thursday a sweeping set of protections for home-loan borrowers. The legislation, which would fill in a perceived gap in regulation, is intended to end some of the practices blamed for recent excesses in the lending and housing markets, especially the marketing of loans to people who couldn't afford them. "This is an important and urgent and critical bill," said Rep. David Scott (D-Ga.

It must pain Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., formerly the chief executive of one of Wall Street's biggest investment banks, to call for more government regulation of lenders and their facilitators. And yet that's what the sub-prime mortgage meltdown and credit crunch have forced him to do, albeit without the kind of crusader's gusto that the circumstances warrant. On Thursday, an interagency group Paulson leads, the President's Working Group on Financial Markets, recommended new or tougher rules for the entities that promote, originate, repackage, evaluate and invest in mortgages.

With the mortgage industry rebounding in California, Thomas O. Gephart tried to get in on the action, paying $2.5 million a year ago for a small operation being spun off by mortgage lender Imperial Credit Industries Inc. While the housing market picked up, however, Gephart's new loan-production business dried up.

Should being pregnant and taking maternity leave ever be reasons to be turned down for a home mortgage or having your loan closing postponed? You might think not, but two new legal actions by federal fair lending regulators suggest that the mortgage industry — and even federally run financing giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — may need to address the issue. In one case, a Seattle-area physician settled a discrimination complaint with Cornerstone Mortgage Co., a national mortgage banking firm based in Houston.

My notebook runneth over. Sightings from the real estate landscape: ? Still going green. Impaired as it has been by the economy, the home-building industry nonetheless has been making a fair amount of noise in the last couple of years about efforts to be more environmentally friendly. But it has a long way to go, according to a new report from Calvert Investments, a Bethesda, Md., company that specializes in sustainable and socially responsible investing. Calvert compiled a ranking of sustainability practices at the top 10 publicly held home-building firms, and despite giving a couple of builders a shout-out for their improved performances, the investment firm still flunked them.

WASHINGTON — The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering new rules on mortgage fees, including banning origination charges based on the size of the loan. The agency, which said the new rules would make it easier for potential home buyers to understand and compare mortgages, also is proposing that brokers and loan officers undergo criminal background checks and go through special training. The preliminary proposals, unveiled Wednesday, also would prohibit incentives to steer consumers into higher priced loans.

The United States sued Deutsche Bank AG for more than $1 billion, accusing the German bank of defrauding the government by repeatedly lying to obtain federal insurance guarantees on mortgage debt. The lawsuit filed Tuesday against Deutsche Bank and its MortgageIT Inc unit is believed to be among the first targeting mortgage lenders under the federal False Claims Act. It also marks the newest push by the government to hold the mortgage industry responsible for perceived excesses that contributed to a four-year-old U.S. housing slump and hundreds of thousands of foreclosures.

My notebook runneth over. Sightings from the real estate landscape: ? Still going green. Impaired as it has been by the economy, the home-building industry nonetheless has been making a fair amount of noise in the last couple of years about efforts to be more environmentally friendly. But it has a long way to go, according to a new report from Calvert Investments, a Bethesda, Md., company that specializes in sustainable and socially responsible investing. Calvert compiled a ranking of sustainability practices at the top 10 publicly held home-building firms, and despite giving a couple of builders a shout-out for their improved performances, the investment firm still flunked them.

The late "Tonight Show" announcer Ed McMahon was far from the only person to get a special mortgage thanks to Countrywide Financial Corp. co-founder Angelo Mozilo. Mozilo approved so many loans that fell outside company guidelines that at least one high-ranking Countrywide executive questioned them, drawing heated responses from Mozilo, according to testimony filed in a Securities and Exchange Commission lawsuit. The people who got such loans were among a group of Countrywide borrowers known within the company as "Friends of Angelo" or VIP customers.

With thousands of Californians facing foreclosure on their underwater mortgages each month, state lawmakers are rushing in with measures to help them cope with their loans and possibly stay in their homes. Three bills moving through the state Assembly after passing the Senate would delay the start of the foreclosure process and limit lenders' ability to force borrowers to cover the difference when their home is sold for less than the amount they owe on their loan. On Tuesday, the Assembly Judiciary Committee approved the most controversial of the measures.

With "The Big Short" at No. 1 on the L.A. Times bestseller list and two No. 1 books on the New York Times' lists -- his tale of Wall Street's recent meltdown and "The Blind Side" -- Michael Lewis is certainly surfing the zeitgeist these days. In "The Big Short," he follows a tiny handful of savvy investors who saw the subprime mortgage crisis coming and placed bets on the coming collapse. As their detective work unfolds, Berkeley-based Lewis, 49, reveals how that market worked: Investment firms packaged high-risk loans into securities and persuaded the ratings agencies to give them a low-risk Triple A rating.

Fannie Mae, the giant mortgage finance company that helps shape lending guidelines, plans next month to raise minimum credit score requirements and limit the amount of overall debt that borrowers can carry relative to their incomes. The changes are the latest in a series of crackdowns by the mortgage industry and could surprise some prospective home buyers. The industry is tightening loose lending standards that led to the mortgage meltdown and the subsequent economic crisis.

This is in response to the recent article on real estate companies adding administration fees to the customary commission and the letter from the president of Coldwell Banker trying to justify them. These administration fees are nothing more than the "garbage fees" charged in the mortgage industry as yet another way to get more money out of the consumer. DIANE F. GUARRERA President Laguna Niguel Realty & Mortgage Services

"Risky 'Exotic' Loans Fostering a Refi Cycle" (Oct. 10) illustrates how fragile this house-of-cards housing market has become. The cycle is being driven by greed from investors and greed from the mortgage industry. As with a balloon enduring ever-increasing pressure from within, the outcome should be no surprise. Michael J. Reardon Chino Hills

A mortgage industry group wants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac replaced with private companies that would be able to issue mortgage bonds formally backed by the federal government. The Mortgage Bankers Assn.'s proposal would replace Fannie and Freddie with several federally regulated private companies known as Mortgage Credit Guarantor Entities. They would buy loans and sell them as bonds with their own guarantee attached, and would pay the government a fee for its backing.

Congress is poised to give bankruptcy judges more power to modify primary home mortgages in an attempt to halt the foreclosure crisis, a move Democrats and housing advocates have been pushing for two years in the face of stiff opposition from Republicans and the mortgage industry. The House is expected to pass the legislation today, and supporters are optimistic that the Senate will follow next month.