One policy issue that could land on FHA Commissioner Brian Montgomery’s desk soon is whether potential borrowers who were granted temporary status under the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals are eligible for FHA-insured loans. Mortgage lenders are divided on the issue and may soon ask the newly installed head of the FHA for guidance, said Brian Chappelle, a mortgage industry consultant. President Obama created the DACA program in 2012 to allow undocumented immigrant children to stay temporarily in the U.S. for two years without fear of deportation. They have an opportunity to renew their DACA status towards the end of their second year. To qualify for DACA, the undocumented child must have arrived in the country before they were 16 years old or be younger than 31 on June 15, 2012. They must have lived continuously in the country since June 2007. A person protected under DACA is ...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Housing Service has issued guidance detailing requirements for refinancing its direct and guaranteed rural-housing loans. Direct and guaranteed are both Section 502 loan programs but are different from each other. The lender for guaranteed home loans is a privately owned thrift, bank or mortgage company, which is also the servicer of the loan. The lender for the direct program is the RHS, while USDA Rural Development, which includes RH, is the servicer. Guaranteed borrowers are capped at 115 percent of the area median income while income levels for direct borrowers must not exceed 80 percent of AMI. Guaranteed borrowers are not eligible for payment assistance, which can lower the interest rate on the mortgage to as low as 1 percent. The assistance is for direct borrowers and is based on borrower income as a percentage of AMI. Finally, borrower protections differ ...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency this week unveiled a proposed rule on capital standards for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, acknowledging that the rule would not be imposed on the two government-sponsored enterprises as long as they’re in conservatorship.
Credit-risk transfer activity at the government-sponsored enterprises is expected to shift from debt note issuance that has dominated the program to more front-end deals with private mortgage insurers and mortgage lenders, the Urban Institute said.
It’s official: The Treasury Department’s goal is to reduce the footprint of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Who says so? Treasury counselor Craig Phillips...
Expanded-credit products look to be a ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy mortgage market. Originations of the loans increased in the first quarter of 2018 while production in many other product categories declined, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. An estimated $10.1 billion of expanded-credit mortgages were originated in the first quarter of 2018, up 3.1 percent from the previous quarter and a 13.5 percent ... [Includes one data chart]
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