New entrants in the Ginnie Mae issuer community expand access to credit at lower cost, deepen the market for Ginnie mortgage servicing rights and help address the agency’s “too-big-to-fail” issue, said the agency’s top executive. “Our top concern is that issuers have the operational and financial strength to meet issuer/servicer obligations,” Tozer said during the recent secondary market conference sponsored by the Mortgage Bankers Association. The flood of new nonbank issuers into the program has been well documented. While they have diluted the heavy concentration of business in the hands of a few megabanks, many have complex financial structures that are less tested in the marketplace, he said. The pipeline of issuer applicants has dropped dramatically, the Ginnie executive reported. To get approved, an applicant has to show where the cash will come from to ...

Genworth U.S. Mortgage Insurance said the FHA mortgage insurance premium reduction earlier this year has not had much of an impact on private MI business so far in terms of creating more competition. “I would say competition with FHA is about the same,” said Rohit Gupta, president and CEO of Genworth. “We have seen the FHA price reduction actually having more impact on FHA streamline refis. Borrowers who have gotten into FHA loans three years ago are refinancing into another FHA loan just to reduce their annual payment.” In January, the FHA pared its annual MIP from 1.35 percent down to 0.85 percent to win over first-time homebuyers and other qualified borrowers. While Gupta emphasized that on the purchase side there hasn’t been that big of an impact yet, he said “we might have seen a little bit of an impact in the first quarter but nothing significant yet.” He added there are a lot more ...

FHA Releases Planned System Enhancements for SF Policy Handbook. The FHA is providing an overview of the FHA Connection (FHAC) system enhancements to help lenders get ready before the Single-Family Policy Handbook’s Sept. 14, 2015, effective date. The system enhancements primarily affect three screens in the FHAC case assignments, appraisal logging and insurance application. In the coming weeks, FHA plans to provide technical details for entities using direct interface with FHAC. FHA Announces Availability of Recorded Training Modules for SF Policy Handbook. FHA-approved mortgagees may now use new-recorded training modules to guide them through the ...

Although no “large” mortgage companies have changed hands in quite some time, investor interest in small to medium-sized lenders remains strong as banks, private-equity funds and nonbanks continue to show their interest as buyers. Since last fall, at least 25 deals have been publicly disclosed, according to sales tracked by Inside Mortgage Finance, but none of the originators have been larger than $4 billion a year in production. According to interviews conducted over the past week with investment banking advisors, in the months ahead lenders that originate between $500 million to $2 billion a year are...

Mortgage brokers facilitated an estimated $39.0 billion of home mortgages during the first three months of 2015...

The regulator said it plans to use its “expanded data” house price index to determine adjustments for conforming loan limits.

The lawmakers join a growing chorus of mortgage professionals calling for an ease on tight enforcement of the TILA/RESPA Integrated Disclosure rule.

It stands to reason that by waiving the charge that Freddie might take in less revenue, but a GSE spokesman said as a financial matter, “it’s not material.”

In total, almost 72 percent of all Ocwen employees are domiciled overseas where labor costs are much cheaper.

The former analyst said Freddie has “an inferior security [MBS] necessitating the need for a lot of time and expense to create a common securitization platform…”