On Aug. 1, the U.S. Senate voted 92-6 to pass a four-bill appropriations package that includes FY 2019 funding for the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Department of Agriculture housing programs. The bill passed without changes to program funding levels previously approved by Senate appropriators. The House Appropriations Committee has approved FY19 spending bills for both HUD and USDA. The full House, which is away for the summer break until Sept. 4, has not yet voted on the package. The Senate bill retains the previous fiscal year’s $400 billion in new loan commitments in the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and $30 billion for the general insurance and special risk insurance program, which include special purpose single- and multifamily loans, multifamily rental housing and condominiums. The bill also sets aside $550 billion for Ginnie Mae ...

Fewer rural single-family mortgages and modified home loans with a USDA guarantee were securitized during the first six months of 2018 compared to last year. Delivery of USDA loans into Ginnie Mae pools over the last two quarters totaled $8.6 billion, down 10.1 percent from the same period last year but up 12.4 percent in the second quarter from the prior period. PennyMac topped all USDA issuers with $1.7 billion worth of rural housing MBS issued during the first half of 2018, up 22.1 percent year-over-year. New issuance also rose 30.0 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter, enough for a 20.2 percent share of the securitized USDA market. ... [chart]

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is placing all single-family foreclosure processes under one roof and under one team. A comprehensive plan is being implemented to centralize all foreclosure functions to make them more effective, efficient and focused on customers, the agency said. Part of the plan is to consolidate individual state private-attorney agreements into a single contract across the single-family portfolio. USDA sees the state-by-state PA contracts as “bridge agreements” to a larger procurement award that allows foreclosure services to be conducted on a nationwide basis, said Joel Baxley, administrator of the USDA Rural Housing Service. Baxley said foreclosure resolutions are taking too long and are costly due to backlogs, which, in turn, results in unnecessary losses to the government. Streamlining the process and developing one foreclosure and ...

Quicken Loan has announced a new reverse mortgage alternative that offers more flexibility and features than FHA’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage product. Simply called HELO, the Home Equity Loan Optimizer is available through Quicken’s reverse-mortgage retailer, One Reverse Mortgage. It will soon be available through the wholesale broker channel as well, according to Gregg Smith, president and CEO of One Reverse Mortgage. HELO’s best feature is its higher loan limit of up to $4 million, which particularly benefits equity-rich seniors, compared to the maximum claim amount for an insured HECM, which is $679,650, or 150 percent above the Freddie Mac conforming loan limit. Unlike HECMs, HELO allows seller concessions as well as debt consolidation to be paid off at closing, which is prohibited in traditional HECMs. To qualify, borrowers must have a minimum credit score ...

Fannie Mae Updates HECM Servicing Manual. Fannie Mae has updated its Reverse Mortgage Loan Servicing Manual to include changes related to real estate-owned hazard-insurance requirements. The policy change applies only to Home Equity Conversion Mortgage REO. The revised manual now requires that, for HECM loans, the servicer must place a property insurance policy on the acquired property in accordance with Department of Housing and Urban Development guidelines. Coverage must be up to the HUD foreclosure appraisal amount or the deed-in-lieu property valuation amount. Should the servicer be unable to obtain a HUD foreclosure appraisal or deed-in-lieu property valuation, it must place coverage in accordance with HUD guidelines and up to the unpaid principal balance amount. Fannie encouraged immediate servicer implementation of the policy. However, the ...

A total of $57.38 billion of income-property mortgages was packaged into new securities during the second quarter of 2018, a solid 12.3 percent increase from the first three months of the year, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS analysis. [Includes two data charts.]

Securitization of newly-originated expanded-credit mortgages declined slightly in the second quarter despite a strong showing in the nonprime sector. [Includes one data chart.]

Fannie Mae is in the hunt for a new CEO to replace current chief Timothy Mayopoulos, but finding just the right candidate could prove difficult because of a $600,000 salary cap placed on the position back in 2015 by Congress.

The nation’s two largest real estate investment trusts that focus on the MBS market – Annaly Capital Management and AGNC Investment Corp. – have built up their MBS portfolios over the past year despite sluggish second-quarter activity.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac shareholders are working to make sure their cases against the government don’t get shoved aside after a string of adverse court decisions. Plaintiffs are looking to tweak their complaint to include a challenge based on a ruling in another case that the Federal Housing Finance Agency structure is unconstitutional.