Meanwhile, a separate survey conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance found 17 percent of respondents holding the belief that the premium cut will have little effect...
New issuance of single-family MBS by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae fell 4.6 percent from December to January, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS ranking and analysis. The three agencies produced $85.18 billion of new single-family MBS last month. The good news is that was up a hefty 24.3 percent from January 2014; the bad news is January 2014 came toward the end of a nine-month swoon in agency MBS production. All of the decline in monthly MBS issuance resulted...[Includes two data charts]
The Mortgage Bankers Association has secured a favorable clarification from the Financial Accounting Standards Board regarding the treatment of seriously delinquent mortgages in Ginnie Mae pools. The clarification was requested after one of the Big Four accounting firms began requiring lenders that service 90 days plus delinquent loans to put the loans on the balance sheet with an offsetting liability even if they do not intend to buy the loans out of the pool. The requirement would have been...[Includes one data chart]
Policymakers continue to provide plenty of doubt about whether anything will happen to shrink the footprint of the government-sponsored enterprises. At a hearing last week before the House Financial Services Committee, Mel Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, said he hasn’t made a decision about future adjustments to the guaranty fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The g-fee issue has been under review by the FHFA for ...
After loosening every month for more than a year, underwriting on jumbo mortgages started to tighten in mid-2014, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association and AllRegs. In the past three months, jumbo underwriting has started to loosen again and standards are the loosest they have been since early 2011.Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions announced that it launched a mini-correspondent offering for non-agency nonprime ... [Includes three briefs]
Federal housing regulators once again sought authority from Congress to impose an administrative fee on lenders to support information technology improvements and administrative functions at the FHA – a bid Congress rejected last year. As part of President Obama’s FY 2016 budget, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is proposing to charge lenders up to $30 million in fees to cover FHA salaries and expenses and information technology upgrades. The IT component will focus on strengthening FHA’s risk-management efforts through expanded quality-control reviews, enhanced tools and other risk-management initiatives. Separately, the president requests an appropriation of $174 million in administrative costs to enable the FHA to implement a risk management and program-support process – both critical for FHA’s oversight of ...
Many industry executives are not impressed with the FHA’s 50 basis point premium reduction, suggesting that the new pricing would not have that big an impact on the mortgage market, according to a new survey by the Collingwood Group. Conducted from Jan. 12 to 21, 2015, the monthly survey said 47 percent thought that President Obama’s estimate of the number of borrowers benefiting from the cut – 250,000 – is too high. Approximately 34 percent said the estimate was “on the mark” and 19 percent said it was too low. In addition, 25 percent of respondents thought the premium reduction was more motivated by politics than a desire to implement a major change in the market. Those respondents who said “too high” also noted that FHA underwriting remains tough and that price differences are not large enough to steer borrowers to FHA. Respondents, however, agreed that ...
Reverse mortgage lenders now have the option to delay calling a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage due and payable where there is an eligible non-borrowing spouse and a case number assigned prior to Aug. 4, 2014. A delay would postpone foreclosure triggered by the death of the HECM borrower or the last surviving borrower and allow the qualified, non-borrowing spouse to stay in the house for a certain period until the HECM is resolved. Under revised FHA guidance, reverse mortgage lenders are allowed to assign eligible HECMs to the Department of Housing and Urban Development upon the death of the borrower. They have the option of foreclosing in accordance with the contract as endorsed or choose the “mortgagee optional election assignment (MOE).” MOE means the optional assignment selected by a lender for a HECM loan with an assigned FHA case number prior to ...
The Mortgage Bankers Association notched a win for small, independent issuers after the Financial Accounting Standards Board agreed with the group’s position on the accounting of seriously delinquent loans in Ginnie Mae pools. At issue is whether companies that service pools with loans that are 90 days or more delinquent should put those loans on their balance sheet even if they have no intention of buying the loans out of the pool. According to the MBA, a Big Four accounting firm issued controversial guidance which would have been burdensome for small mortgage-backed securities issuers that have limited funding and no incentive or history of buying defective loans out of pools. After months of exchanges, FASB staff finally agreed with the MBA’s view that the decision process involves two steps. First, a loan must be 90 days or more delinquent and trigger ...
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