The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced a new disaster-related loan modification option for servicers to use to help affected borrowers.

Ginnie Mae’s latest efforts to rein in serial VA refinancing and rapid prepayments in mortgage-backed securities pools augur additional changes to pooling and refi requirements at Ginnie and the Department of Veterans Affairs, analysts said.

Lenders continue to be hit with steep False Claims Act penalties despite assurances by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson that he would address the FCA issue.

Correspondents, which account for a large percentage of government-insured lending, saw their share grow in 2017 even as retail went through a production slump, according to an analysis by Inside FHA/ VA Lending.

Mortgage lenders and servicers chalked up a win following a federal appeals court decision that would make it harder for the government and whistleblowers to pursue a claim under the False Claims Act.

The mortgage industry is beginning to get a whiff of what reform of the nation’s housing-finance system might look like next year: a federal gurantee on a new breed of conventional MBS but no backing – at all – of the entities that issue guaranteed securities.

Moody’s Investors Service erred in a number of its ratings of Freddie Mac’s structured multifam-ily MBS pass-through securities because it failed to take into account the guarantees provided by the government-sponsored enterprise on classes of its K-deals.

More first-time homebuyers took advantage of the government-sponsored enterprises’ 97 percent loan-to-value mortgage products this year – to the point where they likely took away market share from the FHA program.

Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae issued a combined $50.61 billion of real estate mort-gage investment conduit deals during the third quarter, a solid 19.0 percent increase from the previous three-month period.