Compliance & Regulation

The agency said lenders should avoid reporting delinquent payments to credit bureaus for consumers who have sought payment relief due to the pandemic.

Consumer needs are in flux and Top Producers were looking at technology and risks associated with unexpected financial challenges as areas where they weren't yet meeting those needs. The coronavirus only intensified the urgency.

Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mark Calabria said a virus-induced financial crisis might give rise to more delinquencies and foreclosures than the 2007 subprime mortgage meltdown.

New Residential Investment, a real estate investment trust focused on housing, is selling a portfolio of debt with a face value of $6 billion.

The agency has relaxed some reporting requirements and joined other regulators in encouraging banks to help borrowers, but pressure is building on the bureau to do more to aid consumers suffering financial hardship.

Impac Mortgage Holdings suspended all mortgage lending activity for a two-week period effective March 31, citing liquidity constraints at the company's secondary market counterparties as a result of the coronavirus.

Homeowners reeling from coronavirus-induced economic shock are already enduring extremely long wait times while trying to get relief. Legislation passed last week could worsen the logjams.

One of the largest U.S. mortgage firms catering to riskier borrowers slashed 70% of its workforce, signaling a deep slowdown in that business.

Two Harbors, a real estate investment trust, sold the bulk of its nonagency mortgage-backed securities portfolio to head off margin calls and refocus on its more favorable agency-MBS investments.

The reprieve from mortgage data collection was among several changes to the agency’s supervisory and enforcement procedures to help firms responding to the COVID-19 pandemic.