The primary mortgage-insurance market held up a little better than overall first-lien originations during the first quarter of 2017, and the FHA program appeared to gain ground, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. A total of $165.84 billion of first-lien mortgages produced during the first quarter of this year carried some form of primary MI coverage. That was down 20.6 percent from the fourth quarter, but overall first-lien originations fell by 33.6 percent during that period. The share of new production with MI coverage jumped to 43.1 percent, the highest it’s been since the end of 2008. The key factor for the greater MI penetration was...[Includes three data tables]
PHH Mortgage, Walter Investment Management Corp. and Ocwen Financial these days are all working from the same survival playbook: sell their most valuable asset – mortgage servicing rights – and remain as the subservicer of record. The idea is simple. All three hope to raise cash by selling MSR assets, eliminate the need to hold large sums for servicing advances and – importantly – buy some time. There’s...
Mortgage industry officials are gearing up to weigh in once again on the mortgage servicing rules the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau issued back in 2013. Last week, the CFPB released its proposed plan to assess the rules as required by the Dodd-Frank Act. The bureau plans to evaluate how adequately its rule has met four key purposes: responding to borrower requests and complaints in a timely manner; maintaining and providing accurate information; helping borrowers avoid unwarranted or unnecessary costs and fees; and facilitating review for foreclosure avoidance options. The bureau plans...
Federal Housing Finance Director Mel Watt this week expressed strong reluctance to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to be forced to take another draw on their Treasury line of credit. “FHFA has explicit statutory obligations to ensure that each enterprise ‘operates in a safe and sound manner’ and fosters ‘liquid, efficient, competitive and resilient national housing finance markets,’” Watt testified in a hearing at the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Development Committee. “To ensure that we meet these obligations, we cannot risk...
BlackRock this week joined with most other industry participants recommending that housing-finance reform include an explicit government guarantee for mortgage-backed securities backed by conventional home loans. The asset manager also highlighted the need to respect the rights of investors, ensure fungibility of the existing government-sponsored enterprise MBS in any new system and provide transparency at all levels. “This includes transparency regarding loan origination, securitization, and access to the secondary market,” said BlackRock. “We believe the role of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac as they exit conservatorship should be clearly defined in any new housing finance system.” The firm suggested...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac released a draft proposal this week on how they plan to boost underserved manufactured housing, rural housing and affordable housing preservation markets for low and moderate-income families over the next three years. Based on a federal law, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s duty-to-serve rule requires the government-sponsored enterprises to increase financing in those three areas. The plans released this week are part of an extended implementation process. A large part of the duty-to-serve conversation has focused...
The Trump administration’s tax-reform plan could boost home sales somewhat, though the National Association of Realtors and National Association of Home Builders have raised significant concerns about the treatment of deductions. At the end of April, the Trump administration released a one-page outline for reforming federal taxes. It calls for doubling the standard deduction to $24,000, maintaining the mortgage interest deduction and repealing the deduction for state and local taxes. William Brown, president of NAR, said the plan would effectively eliminate...
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