Private mortgage insurers are moving to adopt policies to fit with the recently expanded Home Affordable Refinance Program offered by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Genworth Financial said that it’s all in, announcing last week that its U.S. mortgage insurance business is making changes so it can fully support HARP 2.0. The upgraded changes to HARP from the two government-sponsored enterprises are designed to enable more underwater borrowers to refinance their residential mortgages at today’s record-low interest rates. Genworth says the changes...

California’s Attorney General has reportedly issued subpoenas to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seeking details of the government-sponsored enterprises’ mortgage lending and foreclosure practices, possibly as a way to cajole the Federal Housing Finance Agency to overcome its resistance to principal reductions for GSE loans. The subpoenas seek information about how Fannie and Freddie are handling thousands of foreclosed properties, as well as details about the GSEs’ mortgage-servicing and home-repossession practices. According to published reports, State AG Kamala Harris, a Democrat, also is looking into how...

Housing finance and real estate groups are hailing the enactment this week of legislation raising the size of mortgage loans insured by FHA to $729,750 or 125 percent of area median home prices over objections by conservatives and most Republicans. The reinstated loan limit formula and maximum cap for FHA-insured home loans are good through 2013. The loan limits for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will remain at 115 percent of local area median home price, up to $625,500. The FHA floor will remain at $271,050 while the floor for loans purchased by the government-sponsored enterprises will still be $417,000. Last month...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is pondering its next move after a federal district court judge in Houston reversed a suspension order against Allied Home Mortgage Corp., an authorized FHA lender, and its chief executive officer, last week. In a Nov. 15 ruling, U.S. District Court Judge Melinda Harmon granted a motion by the Houston-based mortgage banker and its CEO, James Hodge, to temporarily stop HUD from enforcing a suspension of the plaintiffs’ authority to underwrite and originate FHA loans until a related lawsuit is resolved. On Nov. 1, the government intervened in a False...

Most major mortgage servicers reported slight increases in the number of loans in distress during the third quarter of 2011, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index. Servicers handling over $7 trillion in mortgage loans reported a combined 10.70 percent delinquency/foreclosure rate as of the end of September. That was up 12 basis points from the previous quarter. Of the 17 servicers included in the index, only six reported improved mortgage performance data compared to June. The problem was focused squarely on more...(Includes two data charts)

Major mortgage servicers are widely expected to agree to principal reduction for some struggling homeowners as part of the price of settling complaints over foreclosure practices brought by state attorneys general. That idea doesn’t sit well with some MBS investors, who are concerned that they will end up paying some of the cost of reducing principal as a way to keep distressed borrowers in their homes. The Association of Mortgage Investors warns that principal reduction of securitized loans would be akin to forcing the middle class to bear the settlement’s burden. In a statement, the AMI warned that principal reductions could...

ABS issuers are scrambling to get a handle on complex new rules to mitigate conflicts of interest in the structured finance market that are being developed by the Securities and Exchange Commission and federal banking regulators. “At the end of the day, we’ll spend lots of time figuring out how to comply,” said Bianca Russo, managing director and associate general counsel at JPMorgan Chase, during a seminar sponsored last week by the American Securitization Forum. “It’s going to be a challenge to comply, however the rules turn out.” Complexity and consistency are...

Legislative proposals for a TBA market backed by non-agency MBS as an alternative to a market driven by government-sponsored enterprises lack precedence and are full of unknowns, according to analysts. “While this is a laudable effort – and a necessary one in order to remove the government’s sup-port from the housing finance market – the extent to which private enterprise will be able to pick up the slack the GSEs leave behind is unknown,” said Benjamin Feldman, a housing policy analyst and advocate. Peter Wallison, an Arthur F. Burns fellow in financial...

For an all too brief moment last week there was bipartisanship on Capitol Hill as exasperated Democrats and Republicans took turns questioning and berating the CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and their regulator surrounding the issue of executive compensation at the two GSEs.Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Edward DeMarco was called before the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee and the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform to explain some $13 million in performance bonuses to Fannie CEO Michael Williams and Freddie CEO Charles Haldeman and eight other senior executives at the taxpayer-subsidized firms.

Details about the revised Home Affordable Refinance Program revealed few surprises in the seller-servicer bulletins issued by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac last week with only a modest expansion in program activity expected.Among the noteworthy revisions under HARP 2.0, Fannie and Freddie have eliminated the existing cap on loan-to-value ratio, relaxed representation and warranty stipulations and reduced loan-level price adjustments for most HARP loans.