The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week announced a few changes to new private mortgage insurer eligibility rules that were first proposed in July 2014, and the private MI industry appears mostly ready for them. “The new PMIERs are really designed to promote the counterparty strength of private mortgage insurers. We feel like this will strengthen the industry,” said Gina Haly, Freddie Mac’s vice president in the mortgage insurance and risk transfer counterparty credit division. During the financial crisis, some MIs couldn’t fully pay...
Quicken Loans this week went where no lender in the mortgage industry has gone before: Suing the U.S. government for suggesting it’s been doing a crappy job of originating FHA loans. Its legal action not only caught most of the industry by surprise, but resulted in loud applause from the Mortgage Bankers Association and K&L Gates partner Larry Platt. A number of major lenders have paid...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency late last week directed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to stop charging the 25 basis point “adverse market” fee assessed on all loans since the financial crises, but most lower-risk loans won’t get any reduction in loan-level pricing adjustments. As expected, the FHFA did not make any changes to the “base” guaranty fees charged by the two government-sponsored enterprises. Current fees, on average, are at an “appropriate” level. “We are going to monitor this on an ongoing or quarterly basis and we’ll adjust based on market conditions,” said Sandra Thompson, FHFA’s deputy director. The regulator instructed...
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