Exotic mortgages that are costly or potentially difficult for borrowers to repay might be taking another step toward extinction.
That’s because the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) has directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to limit future mortgage purchases to those that: Read the rest of this entry »
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has released the Ability-to-Repay rule of its new Qualified Mortgage (QM) definition, and so far, the industry has given the definition mostly praise. The definition is intended to curb reckless mortgage lending by giving lenders a legal safe harbor if they originate loans that meet the definition.
While we certainly have waited quite a long time for the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau to release the definition of a Qualified Mortgage, the long-awaited terms seemed merely to reiterate present industry practices.
Note: It’s important to remember that such regulations occur to address the issues of the past, whether or not they still exist, and that, for the most part, the riskiest of mortgage products, practices and practitioners have long since been wrung out of the market. If nothing else, we won’t have to deal with a repeat of yesterday’s problems sometime in the future; by then, we’ll probably have brand new ones with which to contend.
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