Two weeks back, United Wholesale Mortgage removed a 25 basis point charge it levied on conventional conforming loans when the borrower opts to manage his or her own real estate taxes and homeowners insurance. (Those payment chores are usually handled by the servicer.) Since making the change, escrow waivers have jumped 12 percent at the nation’s largest wholesaler/broker lender. Company CEO Mat Ishbia declared that other lenders should follow suit if they haven’t already. “I think that overall this is good for the industry as a whole,” he said in an interview. For now, the reaction to UWM’s fee waiver has been...
President-elect Donald Trump this week officially nominated former Republican primary rival Dr. Ben Carson to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development – a move that elicited mixed responses from industry and government quarters. Carson, a pediatric neurosurgeon, eclipsed possible contenders for the HUD job, including Scott Brown, former U.S. senator from Massachusetts; Ed DeMarco, former acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency; Rick Lazio, former Republican congressman from New York; Blaine Leutkemeyer, another Republican lawmaker from Missouri; Brian Montgomery, former FHA commissioner and HUD assistant secretary; and Pamela Patenaude, president of the Terwilliger Foundation for Housing America’s Families. Carson’s nomination is...
The third quarter saw a sharp increase in refinance originations that appeared to give a bigger boost to government and conventional-conforming production than the jumbo market got.
Despite the uptick in rates, warehouse providers appear to be happy (for now) and, like their nonbank clients, most expect the competition to suffer and not them.
RSS