The Mortgage Bankers Association is calling for improvements and clarifications of the new Loan Review System and the Defect Taxonomy to provide FHA lenders greater certainty as to the type of errors that can expose them to False Claims Act risk. The LRS unifies FHA quality control processes into a single system, including test cases from post-closing lenders, post-endorsement loan reviews, lender monitoring reviews and lender self-reporting. It streamlines all the review processes and analysis of results. The new system includes the defect taxonomy, a streamlined rating system for documenting loan-review results and finding the root cause of defects. In MBA’s view, the defect taxonomy shows how far FHA has advanced to ensure lender accountability for the quality of their loans, protecting borrowers and managing its financial risks. However, the Department of Housing and Urban Development needs to ...

The Mortgage Review Board reported approximately $454.4 million in settlements against 25 FHA lenders for various violations of agency lending requirements and imposed more than $1.8 million fines and other penalties against 253 lenders for annual recertification violations. The settlements and penalties resulted from administrative actions taken by the board against FHA lenders from Oct. 1, 2015, through Sept. 30, 2016. The settlements did not constitute an admission of liability or fault. The largest settlement amount, $113 million, was between Freedom Mortgage of Mount Laurel, NJ, and the Department of Justice to resolve alleged violations of FHA requirements and the False Claims Act. In August last year, the MRB voted to release Freedom from any civil money penalties or administrative actions as part of the lender’s settlement with the DOJ. The largest civil money penalty imposed by the ...

The VA mortgage market is experiencing a shortage of qualified appraisers willing to accept VA loan assignments, causing longer wait times, delayed closings and higher appraisal costs. Testifying during a hearing called by the House Veterans Affairs’ Subcommittee on Economic Opportunity, top VA officials complained of difficulty in obtaining appraisals, particularly in rural and remote areas of the country. Jeffrey London, director of the VA Loan Guaranty Service, said the apparent shortage has resulted in turn times for appraisals that can take up to nine weeks. The VA maintains a seven-day timeliness requirement for appraisals for the VA Fee Panel. The problem was more acute last year when loan volumes were strong in many markets, including VA. Turnaround times for appraisals may have exceeded more than 30 days in some rural areas, according to the Appraisal Institute. The markets have ...

A steep drop in VA-backed securities issuance in the first quarter of 2017 suggests that Ginnie Mae’s efforts to curb serial refinancing of VA loans are working, according to agency officials. Speaking on a panel at the annual VA Lenders Conference in Kansas City, MO, this week, Ginnie executives said that a change in pooling requirements for streamlined refinance mortgages appears to have curbed a destructive appetite for refinancing new VA loans within six months of closing. The practice has caused faster prepayments in Ginnie mortgage-backed securities pools and smaller payouts to investors. VA refi volume fell 42.7 percent from the previous quarter (see chart on page 2), contributing significantly to the 32.2 percent decline in total VA loan securitization during the period. John Getchis, senior vice president at Ginnie Mae, said he does not think the churning trend will continue because the ...

Flagstar Bancorp announced that it’s set to acquire certain assets of Opes Advisors, including the nonbank’s origination unit. Opes focuses on purchase mortgages on the west coast through the retail channel. Opes was the 39th-ranked jumbo lender in 2015, with $1.02 billion in jumbo originations, according to an Inside Nonconforming Markets analysis of data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Jumbos accounted for 40.6 percent ... [Includes three briefs]

There is a new boss in the Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities market. PennyMac Financial rose to the top of the issuer ranking in the first quarter of 2017 despite a sharp decline in volume, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. PennyMac issued $10.78 billion of single-family Ginnie securities during the first three months of the year. The figures in this analysis are based on Ginnie loan-level disclosures, which truncate loan amounts to $1,000 increments. PennyMac’s first-quarter production was off 27.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2016, a slightly bigger decline than the 24.8 percent drop in overall Ginnie issuance. Even though the firm fared slightly worse than the total market, its first-quarter downturn was less severe than Wells Fargo’s. Wells has been the top Ginnie producer for a long time, as well as the top player in most segments of the ... [ Charts ]

Congress should make a number of changes to the ability-to-repay rule that would encourage more non-agency lending, according to the Consumer Mortgage Coalition. The CMC represents lenders, servicers and service providers. “The liability for mortgage lending is now so severe that private capital has left the mortgage market and has stayed away,” Anne Canfield, executive director of the CMC, said in testimony last week submitted to a subcommittee of the ...

Small banks reduced the share of non-qualified mortgages they originated in 2016, but some nonbanks are expected to significantly increase their activity in the sector. Non-QMs accounted for 9.0 percent of the mortgages originated by participants in the American Bankers Association’s annual real-estate lending survey. Some 159 banks were surveyed by the trade group and about 76.0 percent of the participating institutions had assets of less than $1.0 billion. In 2015 ...

With the potential for restrictions placed on Ocwen Financial to be removed in the near future, officials at the nonbank stress that Ocwen has transformed compared with when the restrictions were applied. Near the end of 2014, Ocwen agreed to a $150.0 million settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services. Among other provisions, the settlement required Ocwen to meet certain benchmarks and receive approval from the state regulator before acquiring ...

Private capital needs to return to the mortgage market to make the market less dependent on taxpayers, according to JPMorgan Chase. The company dedicated portions of its latest annual report to call for a number of changes that could increase non-agency lending. According to Chase, a “healthy” non-agency mortgage-backed security market hasn’t resumed eight years after the financial crisis because housing finance reform and other securitization standards ...