The volume of purchase mortgages being originated isn’t as strong as it could be because of the amount of home sales completed solely with cash, according to economists at Freddie Mac. The cash share of home sales is declining, but it remains well above historic levels. The economists projected that about 6.2 million homes will be sold this year. With the cash share of home sales around 20 percent, Freddie projects that $1.38 trillion in purchase mortgages will be originated this year. If the cash share was at the norm of 10 percent, an additional $172.0 billion in purchase mortgages would be originated in 2017, according to the government-sponsored enterprise. Before the financial crisis, about 10 percent of home sales were...
The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency this week issued guidance to banks regarding originations of loans with loan-to-value ratios of 100 percent or more in distressed communities marked for revitalization. The guidance is in support of banks’ attempt to revive neighborhoods that have suffered an economic downturn through programs that offer high-LTV financing for home purchases or for purchases and rehabilitation of residential properties. Specifically, the guidance provides...
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council this week issued new examiner transaction testing guidelines for all financial institutions that report under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. The rules will apply to the examination of HMDA data collected starting in 2018 and reported starting in 2019. The guidelines eliminate...
Loans originated on or after Oct. 1, 2017, are eligible for new high loan-to-value streamlined refinance programs being rolled out by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. And one analyst said despite more investor exposure to defaults, he views the programs as a good move in the event home prices begin to trend downward. A year after the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s initial announcement about the streamlined refi program, the regulator set the eligibility date and provided more program details last week. “The eligibility date was...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has begun receiving public comments in response to its proposal to close the so-called black hole in its integrated disclosure rule under the Truth in Lending Act and the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. Interviews this week found that top experts dealing with the issue are pleased the bureau is addressing the problem, which is among the most significant issues related to the new disclosure regime. “Although the ‘black hole’ is highly technical, the impacts on lenders are significant,” noted former CFPB official Benjamin Olson, now a partner with the BuckleySandler law firm in Washington, DC. He noted...
Wells Fargo – the nation’s largest home lender and servicer – has apparently won the bid for Seneca Mortgage and its $53.6 billion servicing portfolio, sending shockwaves through the market. But as Inside Mortgage Finance went to press this week, the jury was still out on whether this was a “one-off” opportunistic purchase or, perhaps, the start of a trend toward depositories showing renewed interest in mortgage servicing rights. For now, Wells isn’t...
Federal banking regulators announced this week that capital requirements set to take effect in January for all but the biggest banks would be suspended under a proposed rule. The proposal applies to Basel III capital requirements for mortgage servicing rights, among other items. The regulators said they are developing a proposal that would simplify capital rules to reduce regulatory burden, particularly for community banks. The proposed suspension generally applies to banks with less than $250 billion in total assets. Thomas Hoenig, vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., said...
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