Market participants welcomed the new FHA guidance that allows the use of third-party vendors as an alternative method to verify a borrower’s employment, income and assets directly with the employer and financial institutions.
With Mark Calabria’s confirmation as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency seemingly imminent and the prospect looming of some kind of administrative reform of the government-sponspored enterprises, industry groups are getting anxious.
Among the four main mortgage products, only originations of expanded-credit loans increased in 2018. Originations of expanded-credit mortgages rose 20.2% to $45.2 billion last year, according to estimates by Inside Mortgage Finance. Total first-lien production declined by 9.9% during the year.
Higher conforming loan limits for agency mortgage-backed securities programs didn’t do much to offset a sharp decline in total jumbo lending last year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. [Includes three data charts.]
Zillow Group, which has tentacles in the mortgage industry, in late February announced that Rich Barton, the firm’s co-founder and former CEO, is returning as chief executive. Spencer Rascoff, a co-founder who has served as Zillow’s chief since 2010, will step down but will stay on as a director.
In a show of bipartisanship, work on reforms in the credit bureau industry kicked off this week, with legislation circulating and the House Financial Services Committee’s hearing testimony from CEOs of three major rating agencies.
This week, Mark Calabria moved a step closer to heading the Federal Housing Finance Agency. His nomination as the agency’s director was approved by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs on a party-line vote of 13-12.
Do you trust your mortgage lender? This turns out to be a crucial question when it comes to persuading borrowers to refinance their homes, according to a paper by researchers at the Columbia Business School. The answer they got: Not so much.
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