The National Association of Mortgage Brokers (NAMB) has sent an alert to its members urging them to urge their congressional representatives to oppose the national financial overhaul legislation that is scheduled for a vote in mid-July.

NAMB president Roy DeLoach told his membership that the new legislation would hurt competition in the mortgage market and put smaller mortgage brokers out of business.

The NAMB’s main bones of contention center around the cap on fees and the elimination of yield-spread premiums, which are deal payments mortgage brokers receive for steering borrowers to a certain type of loan product or rate.

Unsurprisingly, NAMB is getting push-back from consumer groups, who blame mortgage brokers in part for the subprime lending mess. However, DeLoach says that brokers are not to blame; in a Wall Street Journal article he noted, “Brokers did not invent these products. We didn’t underwrite these products. And we didn’t fund these products.”

The Mortgage Bankers Association said it is not actively opposing the legislation.

Part of the financial overhaul legislation package requires lenders to retain 5% of the credit risk on loans that carry fees higher than 3% in an effort to make it more difficult for brokers to load up loans with extra fees.

The Mortgage Bankers Association has released its first quarter numbers for mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures and it’s a new record high.

From an AP report:

The number of homeowners who missed at least one mortgage payment surged to a record in the first quarter of the year, a sign that the foreclosure crisis is far from over.

More than 10 percent of homeowners had missed at least one mortgage payment in the January-March period, the Mortgage Bankers Association said. That number was up from 9.5 percent in the fourth quarter of last year and 9.1 percent a year earlier.

More than 4.6 percent of homeowners were in foreclosure, also a record. But that number, which is not adjusted for seasonal factors, was up only slightly from the end of last year.

Jay Brinkmann, the trade group’s chief economist, said the foreclosure crisis appears to have stabilized. Seasonal adjustments may be exaggerating the change from the previous quarter, he added.

“I don’t see signs now that it’s getting worse, but it’s going to take a while,” he said. “A bad situation that’s not getting worse is still bad.”

The number of American homeowners who have missed at least three months of payments or are in foreclosure has surged to around 4.3 million, Brinkmann estimated.

The real estate community continues to be abuzz about the recent Mortgage Banker’s Association quarterly report on foreclosures for the end of the fourth quarter of 2009, which showed that fewer homeowners are falling behind on their loans.

However, it also reported that the number of homeowners who have missed at least three payments kept growing.

While there will undoubtedly be more foreclosures that will continue to have a negative impact on the market for the foreseeable future, there may indeed be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

However, we think that glimmer is the large toothy grin of savvy investors who are making a killing off distressed sellers.

The Mortgage Banking Association, based in Washington DC (the same people that bought their HQ building for $79 million and sold it three years later for $41 million) announced last week that the foreclosure crisis is “over.”

From a press release posted on their website:

“We are likely seeing the beginning of the end of the unprecedented wave of mortgage delinquencies and foreclosures that started with the subprime defaults in early 2007, continued with the meltdown of the California and Florida housing markets due to overbuilding and the weak loan underwriting that supported that overbuilding, and culminated with a recession that saw 8.5 million people lose their jobs,” said Jay Brinkmann, MBA’s chief economist.

“The continued and sizable drop in the 30-day delinquency rate is a concrete sign that the end may be in sight. We normally see a large spike in short-term mortgage delinquencies at the end of the year due to heating bills, Christmas expenditures and other seasonal factors. Not only did we not see that spike but the 30-day delinquencies actually fell by 16 basis points from 3.79 percent to 3.63 percent. Only three times before in the history of the MBA survey has the non-seasonally adjusted 30-day delinquency rate dropped between the third and fourth quarter and never by this magnitude. If the normal seasonal patterns hold for the first quarter, we should see an even steeper drop in the end of March data.

“This drop is important because 30-day delinquencies have historically been a leading indicator of serious delinquencies and foreclosures. With fewer new loans going bad, the pool of seriously delinquent loans and foreclosures will eventually begin to shrink once the rate at which these problems are resolved exceeds the rate at which new problems come in. It also gives us growing confidence that the size of the problem now is about as bad as it will get.

“The other apparent good sign is a drop in the rate of new foreclosures started. This drop may be temporary, however, because we continue to see large increases in loans 90 days or more past due.

Really? Or is it so much wishful thinking?

If we consider the source, and the astute financial decisions the Association has made, I think the better eye is the jaundiced one.

The walkathon in the commercial real estate market continues.

A Wall Street Journal article last week reported on the Mortgage Bankers Association’s sale of its headquarters building in Washington, DC to CoStar Group for $41.3 million – about $38 million less than what it paid for the building three years ago, and also way below the $75 million the MBA received from a group of banks to finance the purchase.

So is the MBA taking a walk on their underwater HQ? They aren’t saying.

In the WSJ piece, MBA CEO John Courson said, “We’re not going to discuss the financing.”

Which is a different tune than he was singing a few months ago, saying those who owed more than their property is worth should continue paying, even if it didn’t make economic sense. “What about the message they will send to their family and their kids and their friends?” Courson asked.

Yeah, about that message….we got it loud and clear: it’s the smart thing to do!