The top five FHA funders – Wells Fargo, Quicken Loans, Freedom Mortgage Corp., Bank of America and Flagstar Bank – saw their combined originations decline by 5 percent.
In light of the court decision in the overtime pay case, the government must either appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court or start a formal rulemaking process to withdraw the 2006 opinion.
Industry advisors and lobbyists hope they can move the implementation date for lower GSE loan limits deep into the second quarter, but they also realize they cannot forestall it completely.
Laurel Davis, a vice president at Fannie Mae, said the GSE learned from Freddie’s transaction and the pending risk-sharing deal from Fannie is set to receive an investment grade rating from Fitch Ratings.
HUD Delays Implementation of Short-Sale Participation Requirement. The implementation of the PFS Participation Requirement, which is found in Mortgagee Letter 2013-23, Updated Pre-Foreclosure Sale and Deed-in-Lieu-of-Foreclosure Requirements, has been delayed indefinitely. All other provisions included in the mortgagee letter remain in effect. Previous guidance on short-sale participation requirements also remain in effect until further notice. FHA to Consolidate Lender ID Numbers. The FHA will consolidate the lender identification numbers of those participating in both the FHA Title I and Title II programs, provided ...
Wells Fargo claimed partial victory after a Manhattan federal district court judge dismissed certain claims against it in a government lawsuit alleging the bank lied about the quality of defaulted mortgages insured by the FHA. District Court Judge Jesse Furman ruled that legal injury claims based on events that happened prior to June 2009 were time-barred and that the government had waited too long to file a lawsuit. He also threw out claims of negligence and unjust enrichment. On the other hand, Furman let stand claims under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989, which the ...
The FHA has clarified the meaning of “continuous income” and announced other updates to its loss mitigation home-retention options to help distressed borrowers retain their homes and, thus, reduce the number of claims against the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. FHA lenders are required to implement the updated policies in Mortgagee Letter 2013-32 by Dec. 1, 2013. “Continuous income” is one of the criteria a defaulting borrower must meet in order to qualify for a loan modification. While it generally refers to employment income (e.g., wages, salary or self-employed earnings), it may also include ...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Mortgagee Review Board has collected $1.9 million from Oct. 1, 2012, through June 30, 2013, from actions taken against FHA lenders. The MRB actions involved 30 lenders, of whom 15 agreed to settle and seven agreed to indemnify HUD for its losses, according to the board’s latest data. The indemnification agreement covered 166 FHA-insured loans, and 11 lenders lost their authority to participate in the FHA single-family mortgage program. Cases heard by the MRB involved infractions, such as failure to implement and maintain a quality control plan and to review early payment default loans, which resulted in ...
The Inspector General of the Department of Housing and Urban Development urged HUD to strengthen its oversight of prohibited restrictive covenants (PRC) in FHA-insured mortgages and to stop the illegal practice. It is difficult to gauge just how serious is the problem nationwide because HUD did not specifically look for prohibited restrictive covenants during loan reviews and did not track such violations, said Tanya Schultze, HUD regional inspector general for audit for the Los Angeles region. However, audits by Schultze’s team did uncover six FHA lenders that allowed ...
RSS