The
Quotes of Steven Wright, part 3 of 3.
25 - If
at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.
26 - A
conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
27 -
Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.
28 -
The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.
29 - To
steal ideas from one person is plagiarism; to steal from many is research.
30 -
The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.
31 -
The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.
32 -
The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.
33 -
Everyone has a photographic memory; some just don't have film.
34 - If
at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.
35 - If
your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?
36 -
Kevin C. contributed, "I just got back from vacation and found that
someone had broken into my apartment, stolen everything, and replaced it with
an exact replica."
On a
personal business travel note, within the last seven days I've been in Northern
& Southern California (yes, two separate states), Arizona, Washington, and
Kansas; next week is Las Vegas and Atlanta. And I continue to see lenders and
vendors who are trying to help their clients in the best ways they know how in
spite of the labyrinth of weighty, and often conflicting, regulations. Most
realize that the current regulatory environment is a result of past excesses,
but most will also say that borrowers are being negatively impacted and that
the process of lending money to deserving clients has never been more
difficult. Yet plenty of very smart lenders continue to make a go of it with
varying degrees of success. Good for them!
Various
groups around the nation are echoing the MBA's bulletin about a bill that
Congress is considering. "...the House Financial Services Committee
intends to hold a markup next Wednesday, March 2, on a number of bills,
including one of MBA's top priorities, H.R. 2121, the SAFE Transitional Licensing
Act of 2015.
"H.R.
2121 is an important bill for the mortgage industry that would provide
transitional authority to originate mortgages for individuals who move from a
federally-insured institution to a non-bank lender while they work to meet the SAFE
Act's licensing and testing requirements. Transitional authority would be
available to MLOs that have a clean history as an originator (e.g., no license
denials, revocations or suspensions, no cease and desist orders, and no
felonies that preclude licensing).
"The language of the bill...would be a narrow and simple solution to allow individuals to continue working and underwriting loans, while in no way weakening the important consumer protections of the SAFE Act.
"The Mortgage Action Alliance (MAA) will be sending out a Call-to-Action to its members in the days ahead, encouraging them to write to their legislators in support of H.R. 2121. If you are not a current MAA member, please click here to sign up and ensure that you do not miss the call-to-action email."
"The language of the bill...would be a narrow and simple solution to allow individuals to continue working and underwriting loans, while in no way weakening the important consumer protections of the SAFE Act.
"The Mortgage Action Alliance (MAA) will be sending out a Call-to-Action to its members in the days ahead, encouraging them to write to their legislators in support of H.R. 2121. If you are not a current MAA member, please click here to sign up and ensure that you do not miss the call-to-action email."
While
I am yammering about licensing, Colorado posted new PE requirement and
education notices, effective March 1st. Colorado will require 2
hours of NMLS approved state-specific PE and 1 hour of state-specific CE. The
new requirement is a result of Colorado adopting the Uniform State Test (UST).
In
a series of announcements distributed on December 2nd, December 3rd and December 8th, the North Carolina Division of Banks
informed federally registered mortgage loan originators (MLOs) that hold North
Carolina loan originator licenses (categorized as "approved inactive"
status) that they would not be allowed to maintain their licenses in inactive
status going forward. MBA and the MBA of the Carolinas (MBAC) opposed this decision, and MBAC
emphasized to Division leadership that if federal MLOs were not allowed to
renew their licenses it would discourage federal LOs from taking continuing
education and make it harder for them to work for a state-regulated company in
the future. Because NC law limits the validity of prior education and test
results, the new policy would also require many federal MLOs to repeat
education and testing requirements in order to move back to a nonbank lender.
After considering the industry's point of view, the Commissioner of Banks sent
a notice to MBAC, indicating that the Division intended to
mitigate the potential consequences of the December memoranda. Specifically,
for those federally registered MLOs affected: through 12/31/20, the Division
will accept a passing test score from a test taken prior to 1/1/16; and through
12/31/18, it will accept pre-licensing education credits completed at any time
prior to 1/1/16. While not perfect, this is a positive result thanks to the
efforts of MBAC.
While
we're on the Carolinas, thanks a while back to Scott R. who sent along,
"Big news in North Carolina. I was in my Continuing Education class
for the SAFE Act, when one of my classmates told us about a letter she
received. It stated since she worked for a federally regulated bank (Top
20 bank), and she held her SAFE Act license, she needed to surrender her
SAFE Act license. Here is the letter from Pat McCrory. Shocking to read the
letter. There was plenty of uproar in our SAFE Act CE class."
New
Jersey has passed escrow agent and foreclosure legislation, to now make it
illegal for an escrow agent evaluation service to prepare a report used by a
mortgage lender in evaluating the capacity of an escrow agent to perform real
estate settlement services, in exchange for a fee charged to that escrow agent.
The fine for the unlawful practice is $10,000 for the first offense and $20,000
for any offense thereafter. Regarding foreclosure of a mortgage, the new
provision provides established holders of a mortgage to take action to
foreclose. An "established holder of a mortgage" is defined as a
record holder of the mortgage as established by the latest record of assignment
or by the original mortgage recording in the records of the county clerk or the
register of deeds and mortgages, or holder of the mortgage in a civil action
joining as defendants the record holder of the mortgage. Failure to cancel the
mortgage record within the 15 day period will result in the mortgagee being
liable to either the mortgagor or purchaser for the greater of actual damages
or the sum of $1,000, less any fines recovered.
A
while back Illinois has amended its Code of Civil Procedure Section
15-1507.1, the changes include the repeal date from March 2, 2016 to March
2, 2017 and the inoperative date of Subsections 15-1507.1 (a) and (b) is
changed from January 1, 2016 to January 1, 2017. Section 15-1507.1 requires
the purchaser of residential real estate to pay a fee for deposit into the
Abandoned Residential Property Municipality. Relief Fund: the fee is 0.1
percent of the purchase amount but cannot surpass $300.
And
in New York state-specific education notices have been updated for NY-DFS, which now includes a course content outline for the
3 hours of PE.
If
you were around in 2008 I'll bet you can remember all the finger pointing when
the marketplace started to contract (heck, I guess I could say the same thing
for 2015, too); you probably can also remember that the rating agencies
(S&P, Fitch, Moodys) received their fair share of liquidation demands by
everyone from bankers to investors. Over Christmas I was sent this article by a Secondary Marketing guy I know, with the
comment, "Glad to see Congress' initiatives to make the ratings
marketplace more competitive is working out."
According
to Bloomberg, "Of the $5.9 billion in revenue generated by 10 rating
firms recognized by the government in 2014, the most recent data available, 94.3
percent was pulled in by the Big Three, according to an annual SEC review.
That's slightly higher than in 2011, a year after Congress voted for policies designed to open up the
market to smaller competitors. S&P, Moody's and Fitch issued 95.8 percent
of ratings outstanding as of December 2014, the SEC said in its
review. That compares with 98.8 percent in 2007." And that's just
in domestic business. In Europe, according to the European Securities and
Markets Authority, Moody's, Fitch and S&P competed against more than two
dozen other ratings firms, but managed to generate 92% of market share. In my
expert opinion, which consists of tea leaves and my trusty Magic 8 Ball, I
believe the big three are going nowhere.
As
if to remind us that sometimes U.S. economic news means little, Treasuries
traded higher today (and rates dropped) despite a very positive surprise from
always-volatile durable goods orders data for January and stocks and oil
pushing higher. The 7-year Treasury note auction was postponed until Friday due
to "technical difficulties" - given our reliance on computers and
what can go wrong with them it is surprising this doesn't happen more often.
Aside from that it was pretty much a normal day with small intra-day price
movements, various coupons of various MBS securities doing various things, and
lenders looking forward to a great March given the swollen pipelines.
Today
we've already had the major news of the day. The second estimate of the fourth
quarter GDP and GDP Deflator came out (+1.0%, stronger than expected); the trade
deficit widened to $62.2 billion. After this initial round of numbers the
yield on the 10-year, which closed Thursday at 1.70%, is at 1.77% and agency
MBS prices are worse about .250.
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