Chapter 1 — Further Reading

Sources are grouped by how much we can vouch for them. Tier 1 are works and institutions we are confident exist and can stand behind. Tier 2 are real practices and findings whose exact current values we have not pinned down — verify before quoting. Tier 3 are the constructed teaching materials in this book, labeled wherever they appear.

Tier 1 — Verified canonical

The Fannie Mae Selling Guide. Free, public, and continuously updated. It is the rulebook Part III of this book explains. You do not need to read it cover to cover — nobody has — but you should bookmark it and learn to search it. Most "I thought this was allowed" problems in a new loan officer's first year are answered here in a paragraph.

The Freddie Mac Seller/Servicer Guide. The same, for the other enterprise. The two agencies agree on most things and differ on enough to matter; knowing where to look for each is a practical skill.

HUD Handbook 4000.1. The consolidated FHA single-family handbook. Chapter 16 works through it. Also free and public.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's regulatory implementation resources. The CFPB publishes small-entity compliance guides for the rules it administers, and they are the clearest writing on the disclosure regime that anyone has produced. The TILA-RESPA guide is directly relevant to Chapter 22.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency. The GSEs' regulator and conservator since 2008; publisher of the conforming loan limits and overseer of the price adjustment framework. Its public reports are the authoritative source for anything about the enterprises' current status.

Ginnie Mae. A government corporation within HUD that guarantees securities backed by government-insured loans. Worth understanding as structurally different from Fannie and Freddie — Ginnie carries the full faith and credit of the United States; the GSEs do not.

The Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 (HERA) and the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010. The two statutes that created, respectively, the FHFA and the S.A.F.E. Act licensing regime, and the CFPB and most of the modern rulebook. You do not need to read the statutes. You should know which one produced which institution.

The Uniform Residential Loan Application (Form 1003 / URLA) and the standard agency security instruments and notes. The forms themselves are public. Reading one, once, carefully, is worth more than reading three articles about them — this is the substance of Chapter 9 and of Figure 1.1.

Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems (MERS). The registry described in Case Study 2 remains in operation and publishes descriptions of its own structure. Read it alongside the litigation history rather than instead of it.

Tier 2 — Attributed, specifics unverified

Reporting and scholarship on the 2008 crisis. There is a large, generally reliable body of journalism and academic work on the collapse of the private-label securitization market, the conservatorship, and the servicing failures that followed. It is worth reading at least one book-length account, ideally one written after 2012 with the benefit of the settlements and investigations. Treat specific figures with the usual care; different accounts count different things.

The National Mortgage Settlement (2012) and the related state and federal actions against large servicers. Widely reported, with the headline consumer-relief figures in the tens of billions. Verify any specific number at the settlement's official sources or the participating attorneys general before citing it.

Industry volume, market-share, and originator-count statistics. Published by trade associations, regulators, and data vendors, on different definitions and different schedules. Useful for shape, dangerous for precision. Never quote one to a borrower without knowing its source and vintage.

Secondary-market execution and pricing conventions. The description in §1.3 of a lender selling a loan above par is accurate as a model. Actual execution varies daily and by lender, channel, and product. Chapters 28 and 29 develop this; the values there are illustrative by design.

State law on security instruments and foreclosure. Whether your state uses mortgages or deeds of trust, whether foreclosure is judicial or non-judicial, whether closings require an attorney, and what redemption rights exist are all state-specific and change. Your compliance department, a local closing attorney, or your state regulator is the authority. Do not rely on a national summary, including this one.

Tier 3 — Illustrative / constructed

Everything in this book's running files is constructed for teaching and labeled where it appears:

• The Linden Street file — the \$385,000 purchase, the \$365,750 loan at 6.625%, the \$2,341.94 payment, the 706 representative score, the fifty-one-day calendar. Figure 1.1's note is a constructed rendering of a standard agency form.
• Cypress Court, Fulton Avenue, and Harlow Street — the short-appraisal, self-employed, and first-time-buyer anchors introduced in later chapters.
• The secondary-market sale in §1.3's Run the Numbers — a plausible execution, not a quoted one.

None of these are real transactions. Every number in them has been checked for internal consistency, which is a different claim from being real.

If you read only one thing

Open the Fannie Mae Selling Guide and find the section on employment and income. Do not study it. Just look at how it is organized, how long it is, and how specific it gets. That five minutes will tell you more about what underwriting actually is than any summary, including this chapter.