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from our family to yours....

Existing Home Sales Up


Existing home sales rose 0.7 in November, landing at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.61 million -- the highest sales pace since February 2007 -- the National Association of Realtors said yesterday. The gain was largely attributed to a surge in the Northeast, and marks the third consecutive monthly increase. 

--ABA Daily Newsbytes

FHFA Scorecard Leaves Out Fannie, Freddie Capital

The Federal Housing Finance Agency issued its 2017 scorecard outlining specific conservatorship priorities for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and their Common Securitization Platform. The scorecard focuses on maintaining credit availability, reducing taxpayer risk, and further developing the CSP infrastructure. However, ICBA is concerned that the scorecard doesn’t mention rebuilding the government-sponsored enterprises’ capital, which is in violation of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. ICBA also is concerned that a Treasury draw by one or both of the GSEs could destabilize the mortgage market.  --ICBA

An Unintended Consequence of Dodd-Frank: Fewer Small Banks

by John Mason

Big banks are now defending the 2010 Dodd-Frank law.

A recent editorial in the The Wall Street Journal said that: "JPMorgan's Jamie Dimon and Lloyd Blankfein of Goldman Sachs have urged against repeal, and other bank CEOs are also suggesting policy small-ball rather than wholesale reform."

Why should these banking leaders want change?

Larger banks adjusted a long time ago to the most recent comprehensive banking legislation in recent history.

As far as bigger banks were concerned, the Dodd-Frank law was out-of-date by the time it was passed.

The bigger banks don't stand still. Of course, they objected to the new laws and made a lot of noise about how the industry was being discriminated against. Yet these bigger banks had the knowledge and resources to leap ahead of the legislation to regulate them.

That said, one byproduct of the legislation was that many smaller banks were hurt by it. Dodd-Frank created 22,000 pages of regulations. A number of the smaller banks had to divert resources to address newly created compliance issues.

In the seven years following the ending of the Great Recession, the FDIC reported that the banking system lost between 100 and 150 commercial banks per year. This does not include the commercial banks that were lost during the Great Recession. From 2010 to 2014, the number of community banks declined 14%.

In addition, tighter regulations prevented new banks from entering into the commercial banking industry.

Read more here.

Friday Rate Update

RATES 

Mortgage Rates Reach 2016 Highs
The rate for a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.13 percent this week, up from the previous week's 4.08 percent rate, Freddie Mac said yesterday. At this time last year, the 30-year FRM rate averaged 3.95 percent.

This week's 15-year FRM averaged 3.36 percent, up from last week's 3.34 percent rate. A year ago, the 15-year FRM averaged 3.19 percent. ---ABA Daily Newsbytes

E-signs of the times: How e-signatures, e-notarization confound mortgage lending

by Jeanne Pinder

You use electronic signatures these days just about everywhere: when you scrawl with your fingernail on a coffee shop tablet, click to accept an online contract, even when you type your PIN at the ATM. So different forms of e-signing are commonly accepted everywhere, right?

Not so fast. In the banking world, e-signatures occupy a dark, mysterious thicket of state and local regulations. Rules on acceptances vary from bank to bank and transaction to transaction. A welter of different methods exist: Click to sign? Type in your name? Or is a full “wet” signature required with a raised notary seal? Which is right when and where? How can I know?

For all the finality signing on the dotted line represents, e-signatures raise a flurry of questions that lack universal answers. And as with so many things involving digital speed, it’s largely an issue of technology outpacing reality.

Electronic signatures came quickly with the rise of the web, but a patchwork of state regulations and company practices led to conflicts and inconsistencies. The Clinton administration regularized the mess, to a certain degree, with two e-signature laws: The federal Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (ESIGN) and Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA) both date to 2000.

Read more here.....

MGIC Presents Fun Facts