United Wholesale Mortgage announced this week that it’s offering interest-only mortgages, joining a growing number of banks and nonbanks originating the loans that don’t meet standards for qualified mortgages. Officials at United Wholesale noted a distinction in the lender’s IO product: “Large banking institutions have widely offered this option, but mostly restricted its availability to jumbo borrowers,” United Wholesale said. The lender is offering IOs with ...

Investors interested in the jumbo mortgage-backed security from JPMorgan Chase that’s set to be issued next week received new disclosures with sometimes confusing information thanks to a rule from the Securities and Exchange Commission. JPMorgan Mortgage Trust 2015-4 will have a balance of $388.34 million, according to presale reports published last week by Kroll Bond Rating Agency and Moody’s Investors Service. A week before the presale reports ...

Industry participants largely support a plan from the Federal Housing Finance Agency for adjustments to the conforming loan limit. The $417,000 loan limit applicable to the government-sponsored enterprises could be increased as soon as January, depending on house-price appreciation trends over the next few months. The FHFA’s proposal said the regulator planned to use the “expanded data” house price index that the agency has published since 2011 to ...

Hatteras Financial has ramped up its efforts to acquire jumbo mortgages and plans to issue a jumbo mortgage-backed security before the end of the year, according to officials at the real estate investment trust. “Our portfolio plus commitments of jumbo [adjustable-rate mortgages] today is estimated to be about $258 million, so we’re making progress and nearing scale where we can consider securitization,” Benjamin Hough, Hatteras’ president and COO, said this week ...

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering revising income documentation standards to help borrowers that have nontraditional sources of income, according to Richard Cordray, the director of the agency. At a hearing last week by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, raised concerns about the income documentation standards included in Appendix Q of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule. Non-agency lenders ...

Parkside Lending recently “re-introduced” a non-qualified-mortgage product aimed at financing for investment properties. The lender said the “new and improved” Parkside Collateral Loan is available via the wholesale channel. Parkside said there is no borrower-related debt-to-income ratio calculation for the product. Instead, qualification is based on the property DTI ratio with a maximum of 90 percent. The loan allows for credit scores as low as ... [Includes three briefs]

Servicing of VA loans securitized by Ginnie Mae increased in the second quarter of 2015 even as servicing of FHA-backed mortgage securities fell over the same period, according to an analysis of Ginnie Mae data. Ginnie VA servicing outstanding, which totaled $332.4 billion, was up 2.8 percent in the second quarter from the previous quarter and up 9.0 percent year over year. Wells Fargo maintained its huge lead as the largest servicer of securitized VA loans with a total of $101.1 billion, down slightly from the prior quarter and from the same period a year ago. Ginnie data show Wells ending the quarter with a 30.4 percent share of VA servicing outstanding. USAA Federal Savings Bank lagged far behind Wells in second place with 6.1 percent of total VA servicing outstanding, and that was up 7.1 percent from the previous quarter. Third-ranked PennyMac Corp. increased its ... [ 2 charts ]

The Department of Veterans Affairs’ Home Loan Guaranty program is planning to expand its quality-control process to help VA lenders improve the origination process. The goal is to make the VA program, which has seen a sharp spike in lending, work better for servicemembers and veterans, according to Michael Frueh, director of the VA home-loan guaranty program, during a recent panel discussion of government-backed mortgage insurance programs hosted by the Urban Institute. There are still obstacles to overcome, however, Frueh said. Delayed appraisals are a top complaint among VA lenders, who have to contend with the long wait to get VA appraisals back from appraisal management companies or appraisers. Lenders say that, in some of the hot real estate areas in the country, they have seen a number of contracts extended because appraisals were ...

Department of Housing and Urban Development program staff and the agency’s inspector general are reportedly at loggerheads over an IG recommendation to deny FHA insurance to loans that receive downpayment assistance from programs funded through premium-pricing mechanisms. Responding to critics, the HUD OIG is standing by its audit findings, which could force the HUD deputy secretary to intervene in order to resolve the issues raised by the audit report and restore lender confidence. The report’s recommendation has alarmed lenders that participate in downpayment assistance “gift” programs run by housing finance agencies (HFAs). This prompted Ed Golding, HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for housing and head of the FHA, to issue a clarification of the FHA’s position on the issue. Golding’s note reaffirmed FHA’s support for certain downpayment assistance programs (DAPs), “like those run by ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s proposal to remove a key disclosure in a standard HUD/VA form that comes with a residential mortgage closing document is getting flak from the mortgage industry and from some members of Congress. Leading Democrats on the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees are pushing HUD to reconsider the proposal. They fear the proposed change would make it easier for lenders that have engaged in criminal behavior to re-enter the FHA and VA markets and continue their illegal lending practices. Among other things, HUD’s proposal would eliminate the requirement that FHA lenders certify on each loan application that they are not, or have not recently been, subject to certain charges or penalties. In their letter, Senators Sherrod Brown, D-OH, and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, urged HUD to ...