[David] Normally we would get onto our good friend Matt Graham, but Matt Graham is taking the day off ’cause of it being President’s Day.So have a good day, Matt. Appreciate it. Be sure to sign up for Matt’s service. By the way, MBS Live.net, you do so by putting LOL in the signup code and you get the extended trial period at no additional cost. Mr. Kittle, we’ve already talked to you about what’s going on in interest with production. We’re seeing that up and you already gave your comment that. So I wanna get over to Alice talking about the legislative update. I wanna touch on where we were just starting to go, Alice, into the number of CEOs reaching out to me, saying, what are others doing when it comes to state audits? Alice? It is. There’s just a crescendo of people complaining about the cost and they’re begging. He said, I never thought I’d want the old CFPB back, but I’d rather have big one and see ’em once a year and know what I got. But now we’ve got 50 to manage for however many states they’re in.
[Alice] Yeah. I didn’t get a chance to prepare for that question, so I am happy to reach out to a friend of mine. I just had lunch with her actually. And she runs the risk management for a lender and she was actually talking about the state audits that they’re going through, that it is constant. 50 state company and 49 because who wants New York? Sorry, New York, but yeah. In any case, just the constant flood of the state regulators and to your point they want something different now. There used to be, the C-S-B-C-S-B-S and armor through the NMLS, had some standardizations there where certain states do collaborate on the audit and you go through a standardization and it covers multiple states. So I’d wanna look into that, Dave, if you think that lenders are finding that’s not in effect anymore. I wasn’t aware.
[David] I’d love to get people could reach out to me because they listen to the podcast, Alice and they really wanted your perspective on, so if you could do some research on it, it’d be great. Sure. What are you, lemme do, whatcha you hearing out there? There used to be, I’m based in domicile in Texas and gentleman, that was our. Head of the regulatory body regulated mortgage banking companies was someone, I gotta know, he retired out, but he headed up the state regulatory body where all the regulators are a part of the association and that I have also would like to get an update on as to how that’s going and how much coordination there seems to be out there. So yeah, give us an update on it. Okay. Anyway, let’s get into your report, what you got for us today.
[Alice] Today I was going to just give everyone a better rundown on House Bill 6644, which we’ve been watching a little bit, but did pass the house on February 9th. And so now what we have is we do have the companion Senate bill, the Road to Housing Act, and then we have the 21st Century Housing Act that has passed to the house by overwhelming majorities. Only nine people voted against it, and I’m not sure why. But anyway, I wanted to give everyone a summary here for just our single Family Mortgage World because there is a big chunk of this bill that addresses multi-family addresses. Grant funds again for other areas that we don’t typically deal with in the single family residential market. Now to your point earlier, Dave, where you guys were bringing up the building code issues. There is a segment of this act that does require. Some coordination through HUD. So for example, if HUD came up with standardized codes, building codes would it be an easier format for a state or locality to just simply follow those versus creating their own? So, there is some component of this law. Once we’ll see the final version, once the two are reconciled that we’ll talk about trying to streamline that. But most of what the bill is about is standard, getting people to talk to each other. So for example section 403 requires FHA, USDA and VA to share information and identify opportunities for collaboration. Very broad statement basically saying, go get together and figure out a way to make life easier for your clients. Now they’re gonna, him and haw VA in particular, since they have such a different unique borrower set. But I do think there’s some definite areas where they can learn from each other in construction and renovation requirements, appraisals, maybe some credit qualifying documentation. There’s that, but there’s that written into this law, but action has to happen subsequently, I think when we first brought this up, bill and others on the show, we’ll see what really happens, right? There’s the bill saying, go do something. We have to see what the result is of the study or the group getting together. The only real change in this, of something operational is it does fit in this one small bill that I’ve talked about a few times over the years that has been proposed and sat around for a while of changing the question on the loan application about military service. Today, a loan application just simply asks yes or no, have you been in the service? And if yes. What branch and that’s it. And it’s designed to prompt the loan officer to then talk about VA loans. And so this bill passing, there will be a change to the uniform residential loan application to actually put more of a disclosure type wording in there that is that you interesting eligible for VA financing if you have blah, blah, blah. So I think as opposed to just a yes or no question, and relying on the loan officer to bring it up who may not offer VAs and therefore may not bring it up they’re actually gonna put more information in it. So nothing to be against with that one. That’ll be great. Although it’ll be a form change that everyone has to implement. So from there, there really isn’t a ton. There’s a few things for community banks some easing up for credit unions and let me just double check my notes. And then, like I said, the general category, some flexibility for the FDIC. And then they are directing a streamlined application process for new community banks and a two year phase in process, for the de novo banks for their capital requirements. So, also trying to encourage more community bank level startups and lending. So that’s really where that bill is at. You’ll hear a lot of people say, Hey, we voted for this act that’s gonna have a tremendous difference in housing, right? It’ll be the biggest, greatest bill for housing a lot in it but not a lot for really kick starting the single family market. So I’ll step back to you guys.
[David] We still got some more headwinds we gotta overcome yet other tools and that’s what I love what you and Kittle are working on. A new letter going into the administration to hopefully suggest more. Things that can be done, folks, you gotta have your voice heard. When we have Alice and David Kittle working on a letter collaborating together, others are doing that. We had Phil Bracken on recently. We talk about that. I just keep calling everyone’s attention to your voice, does matter. Do something. You go what can I do? That’s when I started this podcast 19 years ago with Alice, what are we gonna do? Let’s just start recording. See what happens. We just crossed over 51 million listens on a podcast. That’s just staggering. So you can make a difference. The most important thing is be consistently staying at it. Very good. Thank you Alice. Appreciate it.
[Bill] So the only thing I would add to your last point, David, is also you gotta show up. Address issues locally. As much as we look at, the going government and the top down, it’s, housing is local.
[David] It’s very much local. Yes.
[Bill] And let’s face it, there’s the group of current homeowners have a vested interest in keeping housing supply constrained. You have less supply of something, the price of it goes up. Yep. So everyone that owns a home is benefiting. Yep. So right. So doing nothing to support housing growth has positive benefits for an awful lot of people. Folks need to show up and show how it can be mutually beneficial that you can expand housing without it being a takeaway from what’s already that one? Yeah.
[David] Yeah. That’s a really good point Bill. Really good point.
[Alice] It is. I was just gonna say, I had, just to put a story with that my family was all talking about we’ve gotta make housing more affordable. And I said, so how do you feel about getting housing prices under control when you are selling your house? and everybody went silent.
[David] Yeah. Everyone goes that. Yeah. That goes, how about every, yeah.
[Alice] I want it affordable except when I go to sell my house.
[David] Yeah. I’m, we’re going through that Right now, my house, it’s, we’re off of a hundred thousand dollars from what we originally started at. It’s still not yet any activities. It’s crazy. good report. Alice. Thank you I know you pulled over the side of the road for being able to join here to all the different crazy places. Alices have done podcasts from, literally from a fishing boat with her manuals open years ago. Her husband’s a fisherman and she’s in the boat doing a podcast. It’s great. I love that, Alice. Thank you.
Alice Alvey, Master CMB
She handles development of their World Class Training program designed to support UHM partners and organizational effectiveness.
Prior to UHM, Alice served as Senior Vice President at Indecomm leading the Indecomm-Mortgage U division, Internal QA and Compliance and SaaS technologies. Indecomm acquired Mortgage U in 2013, where Alice was President/Co-founder, providing training and consulting since 1996. Prior to MU she served as SVP of Operations at a national bank overseeing operations for wholesale, retail and correspondent from underwriting through servicing, and compliance.
She has been in the trenches of mortgage lending operations from application through servicing for over 30 years. Her authoring work in training content, policies and procedures and the FHA/VA Practical guides illustrates her ability to bridge regulatory requirements with day-to-day operations.
Alice has been a weekly contributor to the Lykken on Lending show since its beginning in April 2009 and has made her weekly contributions to 450+ episodes!