As the Federal Housing Finance Agency continues to ramp up efforts to get the word out about the Home Affordable Refinance Program, which is officially down to its last 12 months, the agency reported a sharp 18 percent quarterly decline in the number of takers in the third quarter of 2015. There were 25,824 HARP refinances in the third quarter, down from the 31,561 HARP refinances completed in the second quarter, according to new loan-count figures released by the FHFA. HARP activity accounted for about 5 percent of all refinances in the third quarter, mirroring that of the previous quarter. While both GSEs were down in HARP refi volume, Fannie Mae had more activity than Freddie...

Commercial banks and savings institutions continued to backpedal away from the business of servicing residential mortgages for other investors during the third quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of bank call reports. Banks and thrifts serviced a total of $4.139 trillion of home mortgages for other investors at the end of September, most of them pooled in mortgage-backed securities. That was down 1.2 percent from June and off ... [Includes one data chart]

It’s official. With no fanfare or big news headlines, President Obama signed the salary cap legislation limiting the salaries of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac CEOs to $600,000 each, the day before Thanksgiving. There was strong opposition from many, including White House and Treasury officials, against the new multi-million dollar executive compensation packages proposed by the Federal Housing Finance Agency earlier this year. After a pay hike earlier in the year, salaries are now back at the $600,000 cap, previously set by former FHFA Director Ed DeMarco. The bill by Rep. Ed Royce’s, R-CA, to suspend the CEOs’ $4 million annual compensation packages passed out of the House by a 57-1 vote and was followed by a senate version from...

Loan modifications and other loss mitigation efforts continued to decline in the third quarter as mortgage performance improved. Servicers still face pressure on loss mitigation efforts, particularly with the Home Affordable Modification Program. Some 98,074 loan mods were completed in the third quarter of 2015, according to data released by Hope Now this week. Mod activity declined by 18.0 percent compared with the previous quarter and was down 13.3 percent from a year ago ...

The Urban Institute has suggested separating FHA’s reverse mortgage business from future actuarial audits of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund because it is producing a skewed picture of MMIF finances. In a recent blog, Laurie Goodman, director of the institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center, said including the highly volatile and unpredictable Home Equity Conversion Mortgage portfolio in FHA’s solvency calculation severely distorts the fund’s true financial condition ...

After the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced last week that the conforming loan limit for GSE mortgages will remain at $417,000 for 2016, and capped at $625,500 in high-cost areas, the California Association of Realtors said it was disappointed that the loan limits weren’t raised across the board, given that home prices in that region are on the upswing and among the highest in the country. The FHFA concluded that the average home value in the third quarter still has not reached the level it was in the third quarter of 2007. According to the expanded-data Home Price Index, national average home prices in the third quarter of 2015 remained...

Six months after rolling out an “unsecured” consumer loan, loanDepot has already funded $250 million worth of loans, and issued a $150 million security backed by the collateral. Will other nonbank mortgage lenders follow suit? The short answer to that question is yes, probably, but it remains to be seen whether nonbanks will have the stomach for the risk, though several executives interviewed by Inside Mortgage Trends concede that, in the end, the yield on such products ...

Mortgage employment has risen by just over 5 percent the past year while loan production is on track to increase 33 percent from 2014 – a sign that residential lenders continue to hire as few workers as possible and use outsourcing firms. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends over the past week, it appears that demand for experienced loan officers will remain strong in the coming year, but servicing staffs will continue to shrink. Mortgage recruiter ...

Instead of serving as a vehicle to help reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the “Jumpstart GSE Reform Act” would only hinder the mortgage giants, some groups say. A handful of fair housing advocates and civil rights groups joined forces to pen a letter urging House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-WI, along with Rep. Nancy Pelosi, D-CA, Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-KY and Harry Reid, D-NV, to reject the Jumpstart GSE Reform Act and any attempts to include it in the FY 2016 appropriations agreement. In September, a streamlined version of S. 2038, the Jumpstart Reform Act, sponsored by Sens. Bob Corker, R-TN, Mark Warner, D-VA, and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, was reintroduced in Congress, then placed on hold and reintroduced again, and...

Quicken Loans recently launched a new, TRID-friendly product dubbed the “rocket mortgage,” so named because “in the eight minutes it takes a space shuttle to reach orbit, Americans will now be able to receive a full mortgage approval online,” the lender says in its marketing pitch. “Rocket Mortgage simplifies the largest, most complex and important financial transaction most consumers experience in their lifetime,” said Linglong He, chief information officer for the lender ...