Mortgage Lending Committee

MCBC’s Mortgage Lending Committee brings together banks, housing advocates and city and state officials to work to expand homeownership opportunities for low- and moderate-income homebuyers and to sustain home ownership in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods.  The Committee has sponsored a variety of projects including publication of the Home Counseling Directory, Boston; the Home Counseling Directory, Massachusetts; the Directory of Foreclosure Prevention Counseling Services in Greater Boston; Expanding Home Ownership Opportunities: Recommendations to Increase the Number of Latino Home Buyers; A Look at Minority Loan Denials and Expanding Homeownership Opportunity: The SoftSecond Loan Program, 1991-2003.  Recent Committee activities include: 

• Continued collaboration with the Massachusetts Housing Partnership (MHP) Fund to track the quarterly performance of the SoftSecond ™ Mortgage Program in an effort to identify ways that banks and community organizations can work together to avoid SoftSecond foreclosures.  As of September 30, 2009, the delinquency rate for SoftSecond loans as 5.7 percent, as compared to 9.3 percent for all mortgage loans in Massachusetts.

• Publication of Changing Patterns XV, MCBC’s annual report on mortgage lending patterns.  The report provides analyses of prime and subprime lending patterns in the city of Boston, Greater Boston and Massachusetts in 2007, as well as for the state’s fourteen counties and each of its thirty-three largest cities and towns.  In addition to the data in the report, MCNC is also providing data on all Massachusetts cities and towns in a set of on-line tables.  Over 350 copies of Changing Patterns XV were distributed to bankers, community organizations, housing advocates and public officials.
  

• Partnership with the Massachusetts Bankers Association, the Massachusetts Mortgage Association, the Massachusetts Mortgage Bankers Association, the Massachusetts Credit Union League, housing and consumer advocates and others on the Massachusetts Fair Lending Task Force.  The Task Force built on the work of MCBC’s 2004 Roundtable Discussion on minority mortgage loan denials and the subsequent publication of A Look at Minority Loan Denials, a summary of the meeting discussion.  The final Massachusetts Fair Lending Task Force Report and Recommendations were presented at a Fair Lending Summit in October, 2006.  In June 2008, MCBC, in collaboration with the industry trade associations, published Expanding Fair Access to Credit, a resource guide for Massachusetts lenders on second look policies, mortgage broker oversight and self-testing.

2008-2009 Agenda Issues:

• SoftSecond™ Mortgage Program Delinquency Report (quarterly review)
• Changing Patterns XV (mortgage lending patterns and higher-cost mortgage loans): Findings and Next Steps
• Federal Reserve Bank of Boston reports
• City of Boston foreclosure prevention programs
• Massachusetts Foreclosed Properties Initiative
• State foreclosure prevention initiatives (Division of Banks, Attorney General, MassHousing)
• Reverse mortgages
• Division of Banks oversight of mortgage lenders, licensing of mortgage originators, development of Division of Banks data base, etc.
• Changes in Fannie Mae guidelines

Click here to be included on the email distribution list for MCBC's mortgate lending committee.

Back to Committees