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The PHH Corp. case against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has brought up a number of issues regarding RESPA Section 8; however, there is another question brought up by this case and another ongoing case against the CFPB: Is the CFPB a constitutional agency? We’ll explore this issue in our two-part series.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering a case that could have a big effect on the industry. The case, Spokeo v. Robins, No. 13-1339, U.S. Supreme Court, last month concluded oral arguments and now is awaiting the opinion of the Court on whether Spokeo’s violation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act give a plaintiff standing to sue even without concrete damages. Here’s why you should care what the Court decides.

The PHH Corp. case against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has brought up a number of issues regarding RESPA Section 8; however, there is another question brought up by this case and another ongoing case against the CFPB: Is the CFPB a constitutional agency? We’ll explore this issue in our two-part series.

PHH Corp., which has been waging legal war with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) over what the bureau has labeled illegal kickbacks in violation of RESPA Section 8, has another headache on its hands in the form of a class-action suit against the company for the same sorts of violations. See the details of PHH’s latest legal battle here. 

The National Association of Realtors has reported that it has sailed through the first couple of months of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule with minimal delays, according to panelists at the “RESPA-TILA Know Before You Owe Rule: Regulatory Issues Forum” during the association’s annual conference and expo in San Diego.

A former NFL star and his 74-year-old mother have been ordered to pay $615,600 in restitution to five lending institutions that the pair cheated in a mortgage fraud scam. See what happened here.

A month after the rule was implemented, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) is now providing guidance regarding initial examinations of OCC-supervised institutions for compliance with the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule. The rule went into effect on Oct. 3, 2015.

A couple successfully has sued Wells Fargo after their house was foreclosed upon early, and by a bank that was not actually servicing their loan. See the unusual, but ultimately effective, route the couple took in arguing against the bank here. 

A new agency has announced a grace period for the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule, following similar announcements by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. See the details of the latest delayed enforcement here.

JB Mortgage Co. filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas against nearly 400 homeowners in Williamson County, Texas, claiming that there was a lien against all their titles. According to the complaint, the neighborhood illegally was foreclosed upon by the Georgetown school district in 1990 before the land was developed. See what’s happening here. 

After promising guidance on marketing services agreements (MSAs), the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has delivered. Predictably, the guidance takes a hostile stance toward MSAs. See what the bureau said about the popular marketing tool here. 

Plaintiffs’ names should be redacted in all documents filed in a lawsuit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau by a group of businesses and an individual who provide services related to consumer credit counseling, the D.C. District Court recently ruled. See the details here. 

Retired and illiterate, when an 88-year-old San Francisco man was approached with an offer to get a few extra bucks out of the home he had owned for 45 years via a reverse mortgage, he jumped at the opportunity. However, a few years later, the elderly man discovered they had been taken for a ride, and attempted to contact their servicer using a RESPA qualified written request. See what happened here. 

Complying with the new TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rules which were implemented on Oct. 3 have been a chief worry for many in the mortgage servicing industry, according to a recent survey by Genworth Mortgage Insurance. See what else has the industry worried about the new rules here. 

Readers may remember the small Texas bank that waged a fight against the constitutionality of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, alleging that the 2012 recess appointment of Director Richard Cordray was illegal and that the very creation of the agency circumvented checks and balances. The case continued recently when State National Bank of Spring, Texas, filed a motion for summary judgment, seeking a declaration that the CFPB’s structure is unconstitutional. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its ninth edition of its Supervisory Highlights report, which showed that supervisory actions by the bureau resulted in $107 million in relief to more than 238,000 consumers. The CFPB also focused in on issues and improvements for loan servicers. See what the examiners found here. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau released its latest consumer complaint snapshot for the month of September 2015. See the analysis of the more than 726,000 complaints received by the bureau thus far here. 

Integrity Advance, LLC, and its CEO have allegedly not been living up to their name, according to a recent administrative proceeding initiated by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). See why the bureau says that the online lender was in violation of the Truth in Lending Act, Electronic Fund Transfer Act, Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protect Act here.

J.D. Power released its Mortgage Origination Satisfaction Survey for 2015, which found that overall mortgage customer satisfaction has increased this year as lenders have focused on developing functional digital channels and improving operational efficiency. See how things such as the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule affected the results here. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau filed a lawsuit against T3Leads in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, Western Division, on Dec. 17, alleging that the lead aggregator committed unfair and abusive acts and practices in violation of the Consumer Financial Protection Act. See the details here.

Bank of America settled one of its longest running lawsuits recently to the tune of $335 million. The suit was brought in 2011 when institutional investors accused Bank of America of misleading them into buying the company’s stock in 2009 and 2010. See the details here. 

Seventeen colleges are being warned by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to improve disclosures for school-sponsored credit card agreements after a bureau investigation found that they had failed to make their marketing agreements public. See what the bureau had to say about these marketing practices here. 

Despite increasing scrutiny by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which says that affiliated business arrangements (AfBAs) are unfavorable to consumers, a recent Harris Survey found that consumers might prefer the one-stop shopping benefits that AfBAs may offer. See the details here. 

Wells Fargo reached a settlement with the Department of Justice’s U.S. Trustee Program after the DOJ caught the bank’s “repeated failures” to provide bankrupt homeowners with proper legal notices of mortgage payment increases. Wells will have to return $81.6 million to affected homeowners. See the details here. 

First Mortgage Corp. in Ontario, Calif., has stopped originating mortgages and plans to cease operations, according to a news release. Read on for details. 

The holiday season is upon us and that means it’s the gift-giving season. As you’re going through holiday shopping list; however, make sure you don’t ring in the New Year with a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) investigation on your hands. See how to give RESPA-compliant gifts here. 

There was a 6 percent increase in foreclosure filings in October, with a total of 115,135 U.S. properties subject to default notices, scheduled auctions and bank repossessions last month, according to the October 2015 RealtyTrac Foreclosure Market Report. See the details here. 

The housing market appears to be improving, a report by the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) indicates. The report shows improvement in mortgage performance as well as a decrease in foreclosure activity over the past year. Read on for the details.

Detroit-based Ally Financial Inc. is getting back into mortgages two years after it stopped making new home loans. See what its CEO said here. 

According to a Federal Reserve survey released this week, a few banks are making it easier to get a mortgage however, the vast majority of lenders still are shying away from subprime or other risky mortgages. See the details here. 

Freddie Mac and the American Bankers Association (ABA) are renewing their alliance in an effort to provide banks with access to more mortgage products and services, the two recently announced. See the details here.  

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions is lending its support to several bills that would provide regulatory relief for community-based financial institutions. See what the association is saying will help small banks with their regulatory burden here. 

The Department of Justice brought allegations against Franklin American Mortgage Company (FAMC) for alleged violations of the False Claims Act. Now, FAMC is going to settle the case for the cool tune of $70 million. See the details of the case here. 

Following an alleged widespread scheme to cheat on state-required continuing education courses and exams, New Day Financial has been ordered to pay a $1 million penalty to the New York State Department of Financial Services and surrender its mortgage bankers license in the state, the Department of Financial Services announced.

As part of its ongoing fight with the Department of Justice regarding the lender’s Federal Housing Administration-backed loans, Quicken Loans may decide not to participate in the program. Chairman Dan Gilbert has indicated that the lender has become fed up with the government program. See why he and others are considering cutting their losses here. 

In its latest quarterly newsletter to settlement agents, Wells Fargo detailed problems since the implementation of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule and asked agents to comply with the rules Wells set forth – which Wells said hasn’t been regularly happening. Read on to find out what the lender says have been the problems and how to fix them.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s employees performed a survey, which detailed how the bureau could better serve its employee’s needs. See what the employees had to say about working at the bureau here. 

NewDay USA, the Maryland-based mortgage originator for VA loans, has announced its new chief financial officer. Read on for details about the hire and his background. 

Based on increasing economic activity, coupled with household spending increases and declining unemployment, the Federal Reserve has announced that it will raise interest rates for next year. Although the increase was expected, are homebuyers worried? Read on to see.

U.S. Bank has announced its new president of U.S. Bank Home Mortgage after its former president, Rich Aneshansel, announced his retirement earlier this year. See the bank’s choice here.

After SunTrust Mortgage Inc. settled with more than 45,000 borrowers nationwide last year following the lender’s allegedly harmful mortgage servicing and foreclosure practices during the housing crisis, borrowers in Virginia and North Carolina now will begin receiving their checks. See the details of the settlement here. 

RESPA Section 8 has become a significant issue for the industry as it attempts to interpret Consumer Financial Protection Bureau enforcements in order to remain compliant with the law. With little guidance but quite a bit of threat from the bureau, how safe are your lead generation activities? 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Ombudsman’s Office released its annual report for 2015, which includes discussion and feedback or recommendations on CFPB field hearings, language in CFPB consent orders and press releases, and definitions on company response options when using the CFPB’s public Consumer Complaint Database. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) expanded its eRegulations web tool to include six additional regulations, which it added at the beginning of the month. See which ones here. 

Richard Cordray, director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) is getting fed up with coverage of issues with the bureau’s complaint database. In a rare statement that expressed frustration with criticism from the media, Cordray wrote in a letter to the editor that one publication’s recent article was “riddled with inaccuracies about how the database works.” See what the director said here. 

After praising the Federal Housing Finance Agency for efforts to require that the government sponsored enterprises to undertake credit risk transfers, Mortgage Bankers Association President and CEO David Stevens is urging for more reform. Stevens wrote to Director Melvin Watt, urging the director to “incorporate more explicit up-front risk sharing targets in the 2016 scorecards.” See the details here. 

Defects in mortgage loan applications fell 2.5 percent in October compared with September and decreased 10.2 percent compared with a year ago, the First American Loan Application Defect Index revealed. Read on to see what else the report had to say and what it means for the industry. 

The first month after the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure (TRID) rule took effect on Oct. 3, 2015, there have not been very many disruptions to home sales and mortgage closings, the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey indicated.

After the U.S. Attorney’s Office uncovered a multi-million dollar mortgage fraud scheme in Massachusetts, the co-conspirators involved in the fraud are finally getting sentenced for their roles in the scheme. The fraudsters are being given jail time, and are being ordered to pay millions of dollars in restitution to victims. See the details here. 

We still can’t cook a turkey in eight minutes, but we can get a mortgage, according to Quicken Loans, which just launched its Rocket Mortgage program. See how the new digital mortgage program works here.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released a report showing that existing home sales, which include single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops, declined 3.4 percent to an annual rate of 5.36 million units in October, failing to keep pace with September’s boom. Still, the report shows that the numbers are still higher than they’ve been in eight years. See the details here. 

Prospect Mortgage has reached an agreement with the Multi-State Mortgage Committee (MMC) on behalf of 50 state mortgage regulators following alleged pattern of charging improperly disclosed and unsupported fees paid to the company’s affiliate, C2C Appraisal Services, LLC, which was uncovered by a multi-state investigation. See the details here. 

The Department of Justice is going after executives at the Royal Bank of Scotland and JPMorgan Chase for “allegedly selling flawed mortgage securities” after receiving warnings about securitizing too many faulty mortgages leading to the housing crisis of 2008. See what’s happening here. 

Mortgage One, a Michigan-based lender, has reached a settlement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development after allegedly delaying a man’s loan application because of his disabilities. See the details here. 

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) released its fall 2015 rulemaking agenda, which highlights the topics and concerns the CFPB is most focused on and where its focus will shift in the upcoming year. See where the CFPB is turning its regulatory gaze here.