After years of lobbying by the mortgage industry, Congress gave Ginnie Mae’s budget a boost for fiscal year 2024.

Mortgage industry stakeholders said Freddie Mac’s pilot program to alleviate repurchase requests is a better option than Fannie Mae’s new notice of potential defect.

The six-bill appropriations package, which includes FY2024 funding for the departments of Housing and Urban Development and Veterans Affairs, now heads to the Senate.

The new program will help reduce the number of buyback requests lenders receive for loans that are defective but still performing.

The Community Home Lenders of America last week wrote to the CEOs of credit bureaus Equifax, TransUnion and Experian, asking them to roll back recent price increases on soft credit pulls.

The Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco becomes the first FHLBank to allow members to use mortgage loans based on VantageScore 4.0 as collateral for advances.

VA borrowers could stand a better chance when bidding for a home if the agency’s minimum property requirements are aligned with GSE standards, according to mortgage lenders.

While FHFA didn’t provide details, lenders believe the agency wants the GSEs to coordinate their mortgage repurchase request policies.

The Community Home Lenders of America recently called for a single credit scoring process across conventional and government home loan programs. Spokespersons for FHA, VA this week said the agencies are considering a bi-merge credit scoring process.

Counterintuitively, the bi-merge will increase the number of credit pulls necessary to complete the average mortgage loan application. Consumers will ultimately pay for those extra pulls.