Fannie Mae Announces Changes in Desktop Underwriter for VA Loans. On April 15, Fannie Mae issued a release note announcing several changes to Desktop Underwriter for VA loans that will take effect during the weekend of May 17, 2014. The DU determination of when a bankruptcy occurred on VA loan case files will be updated. With the May change, bankruptcy information found in publicly accessible segments of the credit report will be used in determining when the bankruptcy occurred. A waiting period requirement will then be applied. The bankruptcy information in the tradeline segment will only be used to determine when the bankruptcy happened if the public records show no such info. However, if the records do reflect a bankruptcy but the date is either blank or invalid, DU will issue a “refer” recommendation. The lender must review the credit report and bankruptcy documentation to ...

Despite the ugliness of the first quarter, there are signs that loan production may finally be firming up.

The CFPB will work with participants to test many eClosing features, including those that may enable consumer understanding, incentivize early document review and facilitate error detection.

He cited one example where a $40 billion MSR package can be sold to one buyer that agrees to board the servicing files in increments of say $5 billion a month.

So, what does this mean for the industry? Answer: That the Mortgage Mutual Insurance Fund likely will return to health even faster and that maybe there’s room for FHA to cut premiums.

Attorney Richard Andreano noted that the rule’s bonus provisions remain confusing for many lenders.

However, he suggested that Altisource is reevaluating some of the pricing on its services. Some 6,705 properties were sold via Hubzu in the first quarter of 2014.

Even in the depths of the financial crisis, the mortgage industry was producing more new loans than it did during the first quarter of 2014, according to new Inside Mortgage Finance estimates. Mortgage lenders generated just $235 billion of new home loans during the first three months of this year. That was down 23.0 percent from the fourth quarter’s estimated $305 billion in originations and it was off 58.0 percent from the first quarter of 2013. It was...[Includes one data chart]

Nonbank mortgage lenders accounted for a hefty 43.2 percent of single-family mortgages securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac during the first quarter of 2014, according to a new analysis of loan-level data by Inside Mortgage Finance. Nonbanks delivered $55.8 billion of home loans to the government-sponsored enterprises during the first three months of 2014. That was down 17.7 percent from the previous quarter, but overall GSE business was down even more, by 29.1 percent. Both subsets of the nonbank segment – larger companies that ranked among the top 25 lenders overall and smaller mortgage companies – claimed...[Includes one data chart]

Two large acquisitions of mortgage servicing rights have been put on hold by regulators at the Federal Housing Finance Agency and Ginnie Mae, causing consternation in the secondary market. Moreover, according to trade group officials and advisors in the space, a deal needs to be struck between regulators and the industry that spells out the rules of the road when it comes to transferring MSRs from banks to their ultimate destination at nonbanks that are hungry for both product and market share. “We need an environment where servicing can be transferred...