Monday Morning Cup of Coffee takes a look at housing finance news across HousingWire’s weekend news desk.
The biggest story is the clear attempt by Josh Rosner to draw Mortgage Bankers Association CEO David Stevens into a debate on the conservatorship of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. There's more coming, hopefully, and be sure to read Stevens' original piece for a valid comparison.
We posted it last night, read it and get caught up on the debate. And, even better, both are exclusive to HousingWire.
We’ll let readers decide who’s in the right on the message boards.
This just in: Accenture Mortgage Cadence, the digital solutions provided to mortgage finance players, transitioned all of its clients, which is more than 600 mortgage lenders across the United States, to the Accenture Mortgage Cadence Cloud.
“Today’s digitally savvy borrowers expect the same kind of quick, efficient service from their mortgage lender that they get from online retailers and other services,” said Keith Moore, software cloud and SaaS support executive for Accenture Mortgage Cadence.
“All clients using our Enterprise Lending Center and our Loan Fulfillment Center have moved to our enhanced cloud technology, which provides the environment needed to get borrowers to the closing table on time while keeping up with the fast-changing regulatory landscape,” Moore added.
Close fast + Avoid CFPB = Happy mortgage lender.
This article by Joe Light in The Wall Street Journal talks about bringing the private-label residential mortgage backed securities market back from the dead.
It’s posited as one way to revive mortgage lending.
“To broaden mortgage access, the U.S. government wants to revive the market that brought the economy to its knees. But years of effort haven’t succeeded in rekindling it,” states Light.
Putting the argument that the PLS market in and of itself “brought the economy to its knees,” on the side, Light adds this salient point: “Government, investors and lenders [are teaming] up to revive market for mortgage bonds issued by private firms, including bonds backed by subprime borrowers.”
Watch out, crash coming!?!? Doubt it, but food-for-thought nonetheless.
One thing is for sure in this piece, “Global economic troubles are making mortgages more attractive,” by Sam Catherman of BABW news, is that the WSJ is right to be vigilant.
As the world struggles to maintain economic growth, the cost of borrowing is plummeting in the U.S., “ the author states. “The continued drop in mortgage rates in the U.S. have some people worrying that we may be teeing up for a repeat of 2008’s bubble crisis, the underlying factors surrounding the drop may be a bit more complex.”
One good news for borrowers is that mortgage rates continue to stay low.
This article in The Washington Post states another big picture problem: “It is yet another unanticipated ripple effect of the global economic slowdown: For many Americans, who have benefited from a collapse in gas prices, interest rates have plunged on mortgage and auto loans. The decline in rates comes as most of the readings on the global economy have been glum. China’s meteoric economic growth is starting to plateau, striking fear in investors around the world. The recoveries in Europe and Japan are stalling, and policymakers are having a harder time jump-starting them,” write Ylan Q. Mui and Jonnelle Marte.
“But all that bad news has an upside: ultra-low rates. Analysts are wary of predicting how long this grace period will last, but many consumers are welcoming the extension of easy money that many feared had passed them by,” they state.
The FDIC didn’t close any banks yet this year and we’ll probably stop talking about it here until they do.
