The FHA’s efforts at underwriting reform and reducing its footprint to give way to private capital are nothing but an illusion of reform, according to the American Enterprise Institute. Raising the annual mortgage insurance premium and the required downpayment for FHA-insured loans greater than $625,500 as well as tightening the underwriting on loans with credit scores of 620 or below would impact only a tiny percentage of FHA business, said Edward Pinto, a resident fellow at AEI. “These changes make great sound bites but clearly this is the illusion of reform,” he said. Both measures are part of FHA’s latest efforts to ...

Reverse Mortgage Solutions, a HECM lender bought by Walter Investment Management Corp. last fall, has received a $100 million warehouse line of credit from Royal Bank of Scotland, according to a new filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The line is legally structured as a master repurchase agreement. However, it is also considered “uncommitted” and matures in February of 2014. RMS will use the money to fund new originations of HUD-backed home equity conversion mortgages. Several of the nation’s largest banks have exited the HECM space the past two years, including Wells Fargo and Bank of America. A handful of nonbanks have moved ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is mandating that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac each enter into $30 billion of “risk sharing” transactions this year and move a little more quickly to reduce their $1.19 trillion of on-balance sheet holdings, including whole loans and non-agency MBS. The edict comes directly from FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco, who provided few details about the initiative during a speech this week to the National Association for Business Economics. DeMarco also announced that the regulator intends to set up a new government entity that will develop and manage the common MBS securitization platform that’s been in the works for the two government-sponsored entities. One reason for pushing the GSEs to test drive risk-sharing structures is...

The purchase mortgage business has been in the tank since the housing crash. Although home buying is on the upswing, will it be enough to replace the refi boom?

The National Association of Federal Credit Unions is urging the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take another look at the usefulness of APR disclosures, among other things.

Merger and acquisition activity is perking up in the mortgage market with a deal set for unveiling possibly by Friday afternoon or early next week.

Reverse Mortgage Solutions has tapped RBS for a large warehouse line of credit that matures next year.

Nationstar Mortgage earned $63.8 million in the fourth quarter as it continued to snatch up MSR packages.

Fannie Mae is about to offer $250 million of nonperforming mortgages for sale in the secondary market.

Industry observers are scratching their heads after the Federal Housing Finance Agency this week took another step toward a future secondary mortgage market by announcing a plan to establish a single entity that would be used by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and at some point, perhaps, private issuers – to issue mortgage-backed securities. Acting FHFA Director Ed DeMarco, in a speech before the National Association for Business Economics, laid out his plan for a single MBS platform that would be run by, and apparently developed by, an entirely new government entity “separate” from Fannie and Freddie. The platform, he promised, would have...