• Mortgage troubles remain far from over for Bank of America
• Banks begin write-downs long overdue: starting with servicing rights
• Lenders demand relief from buybacks before doing more loan mods
• FHFA files massive suit re MBS
• MERS will no longer act as forecloser
• Home prices holding their own?
• GSE solution elusive,and going nowhere. What about subordinated bonds?
• OCC orders banks to stop foreclosures, examine their systems
• In another defeat for MERS, federal court in Oregon dismisses a foreclosure
• Overall Housing Picture So Bad It Imperils Economic Recovery
• Home Prices Still Headed Down, Now in Double-Digit Territory
• Bank sales still dominate the market
• Home Values May Drop Another 25%
• Fannie, Freddie Phase-out Proposed
• Disdaining HUD's 2009 GFE work, interim CFPA head Elizabeth Warren launches a "1 or 2-page" mortgage disclosure project

• State AGs Working on Robo Foreclosure Settlement with Four Major Loan Servicers

• In a Landmark Case, Mass. Court Kills Banks' Foreclosures for Missing Docs

• Full text: Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act HR3217

• Bank of America sues First American for $500 million on 5.000 HELOC 'lien protection' policies

• HUD goes with Bush administration's new RESPA rule

• Text of RESPA 'required use' rule

• Housing prices" within shouting distance of a bottom" says mortgage-backed security pioneer Lewis Rainieri.

• IMF sees parallels to the Great Depression, warns of coming deflation

• As of May 1, 2009 mortgage brokers stop talking to appraisers. Home Valuation Code of Conduct (HVCC) kicks in

Foreclosure sale snafus and short title searches frustrate bargain-hunting buyers, delay closings

Pulte swallows Centex, becomes the nation's largest builder,

New FTC chief out to clamp down on mortgage broker abuses.

• Imagine the CFP rule-writers taking on the title business.
They're not, but imagine what it would be like if they were. Everyone in the business would be trying to guess what aspects of the business they would be taking on. The business is so complex, both structurally and process-wise, that ten thousand rule-writers couldn't hit it all. The present administration's style is to attack things they read about in the newspapers. (That's the way they're reportedly looking at the mortgage business-- robo-signing and loan mods). Imagine people in the title industry trying to guess what aspects of the business they'd be going after. They'd probably just hunker down and do their best to look small and insignificant. They'd probably stop doing everything they thought might look suspect. They'd probably stop working on everything they thought would be likely to be nullified by new regulations. Uncertainty would no doubt grip the industry. HIring would slow and perhaps stop. Veteran people critical to the organization would leave.

This is what the mortgage people, the bankers, the credit card folks, and everyone known to be the focus of current rule-writing is going through right now.

• LIttle chance of home prices really stabilizing until all those distressed properties clear the market
One reason, a good reason, for hustling those clearing sales. Trouble is that lenders are reluctant to realize the losses the low prices sure to result from those clearing sales. And the expense of processing those sales, which is considerable.

• Remember: that S&P downgrade of U.S. and Fannie--Freddie debt was brought to us by the same folks who gave AAA ratings to all those lousy mortgage backed securities.
What you want to do in this life is go into the "opinion" business. Charge big bucks for them but plead "just our opinion" when all goes terribly sour. Then go and do it again.

That's right, of the cast of thousands involved in mortgage production before the crash, it is the opinion of TPOB that rating firms were the single most culpable player. Without their screwy rating systems the meltdown is not likely to have happened. They have paid no price.

• Will all those new CFPB regulations create more, better, and less expensive home mortgages?
Not hardly. Nor can they do anything but stifle mortgage-making. In fact, nothing going on in Washington today suggests that more loans is an objective or a likely result. It hasn't even been given a thought.
And more mortgages, now, is our only hope.

• Have you wondered why mortgage rates haven't skyrocketed?
Join the crowd. With foreclosure delays, mortgage mods lowering rates, extending terms and now reducing principal, and all the other interruptions, you'd think the income stream to MBS investors would have to be miserable, making those investors a tough sell for any new issues, except maybe at higher rates.
Well, it's not happening.
Why? Although rates are now up in the 4 and 5 percent range they're still low by historic standards. So the answer has to be that the FHA, Fannie, and Freddie, all wards of the U.S., are doing their best to make mortgage lending look, more or less, 'normal.'

• Implementing Dodd-Frank will take thousands of CFPA employees and cost hundreds of millions
And take decades. And may not work. Have you looked at the bill carefully? It directs the CFPA to regulate the mortgage industry. Period. Are you kidding? It will be like regulating the daily lives of the earth's ant populations. .

• Don't waste time fixing the foreclosure processing mess
Why? Because this glut of simultaneous foreclosures will not happen again in our lifetimes. Foreclosures are always few and often side-stepped by deeds in lieu and other solutions and will go back to being that way when all this is over. Lenders will regret the time and money they put into elaborate fixes.
.
• A CFPB of amateurs?
Elizabeth Warren seems like a nice person, an intelligent person. She came up with the idea for the Consumer Financial Protection Agency and it looks like President Obama will name her its first boss. An unofficial CFPA is already in place, churning out forms. It has hired three senior managers, one a former community affairs staffer at the Fed, one from the AFL-CIO, and the third a former state AG who achieved fame suing mortgage servicers over their foreclosure fumbles.
None of the people named above, including Mrs. Warren, has ever spent a day in real estate or knows anything about real estate finance. None has ever been in business. None has ever managed anything.

• Do regulators know anything about the industries they're planning to push around?
Better question is: Do they care? As an example, HUD, which is supposed to know something and is relatively friendly to settlement services, created a RESPA Good Faith Estimate that made closing agents into partisans, partisans for borrowers. Not for sellers, not for realtors, not for lenders -- partisans for borrowers. True, borrowers are amateurs and everyone else a pro. But a closing agent is supposed to be impartial, unbiased, especially where the closing is structured as an escrow. Besides making closing agents uncomfortable and uncertain about their liability, the GFE has increased the cost to close by up to 30%, an increase that will ultimately be paid by that borrower.

• One thing you know for sure --Bill Foley will get his staff costs down
Fidelity National chairman William P. Foley II is known for his aggressive cost cutting when order counts fall. And in the title business cost cutting begins with personnel cutting. You can be sure his operations managers are now at rock bottom on personnel. It's either that or dismissal with Mr. Foley. Order counts are now so rocky and the outlook for 2011 so grim that Fidelity National has cut corporate staff by an impressive 17%.

• Mortgage lending is still a million miles from normal
With prime mortgages only being made and mortgage brokers, warehousers, and originators all on the sidelines, real estate finance is far, far short of normal. The administration doesn't seem to care. At least FHA is getting well, enjoying the advantage of no competition. Or is it, with all those 93% LTE loans it is making?

Can a sub-trillion dollar mortgage year still be profitable?
Experts at MBA headquarters are guessing 2011 will produce less than a trillion in mortgage originations, a level below which the major title underwriters begin worrying about breaking even. When Fidelity National cuts "corporate" staff levels by 17% you know they're concerned. So should everyone.

• Was the Massachusetts court which held against two banks' ownership of the mortgages they tried to foreclose looking at note endorsements or just at the chain of mortgage assignments? Press reports do not make this clear. Nor does the case as reported in the press mention whether MERS was involved. Only when courts fully understand the processes by which mortgages are securitized and serviced will any kind of meaningful law emerge.

• Speaking of industry knowledge, none of the three recent appointees to the Bureau of CFB has any experience in real estate finance, nor any kind of business for that matter.

The Millennial Title Plant

The Millennial Title and Settlement Office

The Millennial Prior Policy Sharing System

The Millennial National Transaction Database

The Millennial Standard Settlement