Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie All saw most of their business come from borrowers earning less than $150,000 per year.

At least a dozen or so national lenders – almost all of them nonbanks – have rolled out lending programs for loans that don’t meet the qualified mortgage standard, and none of them expect to issue a mortgage-backed security this year. Moreover, most aren’t so certain they will be able to issue a security next year either, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t thinking about it. New Penn Financial has created...

Demand in the fixed-income markets for Ginnie Mae securities continues to increase at home and abroad as the program’s deep liquidity and explicit government guaranty draw more investors, according to agency officials and MBS issuers. The relatively high proportion of purchase-money loans and first-time buyers helped Ginnie edge past Freddie Mac in recent months in terms of new issuance, noted John Getchis, head of Ginnie’s Office of Capital Markets, during the Ginnie Mae Summit held in Washington, DC, this week. “We saw...

The Treasury Department will have a key role in developing a $1 billion "test" non-agency security.

FHA total originations rose 9.9 percent month-over-month in July as purchase mortgage activity continued to rise, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of agency data. Lenders produced a combined $13.01 billion in new FHA-insured mortgages, up from $11.85 billion in June. Purchase mortgages accounted for 81.9 percent of total FHA production during July, the latest month for which FHA originations data were available. The July increase reflects an upward monthly trend in FHA lending that began in March, when FHA originations totaled $8.74 billion. Production then climbed steadily to $10.36 billion in April, $10.61 billion in May and $11.85 billion in June. Originations jumped 16.0 percent from the first to the second quarter. A recent analysis by affiliated publication Inside Mortgage Finance found that most of Ginnie Mae’s purchase activities (FHA, VA and rural housing loans) in the ...

An estimated $336 million out of a $614 million settlement that JPMorgan Chase agreed to pay for not complying with FHA requirements will go towards stabilizing the agency’s ailing Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. On Feb. 4, 2014, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York took over a whistleblower lawsuit and started an investigation of Chase on behalf of the government for alleged violations of the False Claims Act. The whistleblower or “relator” alleged that Chase, an approved FHA direct endorsement lender, had not followed FHA requirements when underwriting loans, causing the MMIF to incur significant losses when the borrowers defaulted on their loans. The U.S. Attorney filed suit against Chase based on the results of an audit conducted by HUD’s Inspector General that looked into the bank’s underwriting and refinancing of FHA loans. The lawsuit alleged that ...

Issuers of securities backed by Home Equity Conversion Mortgages created $518 million in new HMBS pools during August, the third largest monthly HMBS issuance this year and the latest month for which HMBS issuance data was available. August’s new issuance total was up slightly from July’s $507 million, according to New View Advisors, which advises financial services clients on capital markets, product development and investment strategies. Ninety-one pools were issued, consisting of 46 original issuance and 45 tail pools. Original HMBS pools are created when a pool of FHA-insured reverse mortgages is securitized for the first time. Tail HMBS issuances are HMBS pools created from the uncertified portions of HECMs that have already had their original HMBS issuance. Tail issuances accounted for about $140 million. Beginning with FY 2014, HECM principal limits were ...

Ginnie Mae securitized a relatively higher volume of loans for African-American borrowers than did Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, according to a new Inside FHA Lending analysis of recently released Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data covering 2013 mortgage originations. Nearly a quarter, 24.7 percent, of mortgages made to black borrowers last year had FHA, VA or rural housing loans financed through Ginnie Mae, loan-level HMDA data show. Fannie Mae (19.2 percent) and Freddie Mac (9.9 percent) also accounted for large shares of mortgages for black borrowers. However, blacks accounted for just 4.2 percent of mortgages with the race of the primary borrower identified in HMDA reports. Fannie actually had a bigger share of the Hispanic market (24.7 percent), but Ginnie accounted for a substantial 17.3 percent of mortgages made to Hispanic borrowers last year. All three agencies saw ... [1 chart]

Obama administration officials and federal regulators met recently with mortgage industry representatives to discuss lender overlays and other obstacles preventing borrowers with slightly tainted credit and first-time homebuyers from obtaining a mortgage. Neither administration officials nor industry participants, however, spoke on or off the record about the things that were discussed during the Sept. 17 meeting at the White House. It was also unclear whether both sides have agreed on any solutions to the issues that lenders say are preventing them from lending. Sources, however, said one major issue is lenders’ uncertainty about their legal responsibilities and liabilities, which already have cost the industry billions of dollars in massive legacy settlements. Lenders have complained that even the slightest loan paperwork error could force them out of the ...

Approved issuers must ensure that loans have the requisite federal insurance or guarantee before bundling them for securitization, cautioned Ginnie Mae. Loans that fail Ginnie’s “loan matching” review will be tagged as “uninsured” and will not be accepted for securitization, according to John Kozak, a Ginnie Mae account executive and a panelist at a conference sponsored by the agency this week. Ginnie Mae uses loan matching to screen for mortgages that may have been endorsed on paper but have not been actually insured or guaranteed by either the FHA, VA or the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Development. Every month, Ginnie Mae takes a certain lender’s entire mortgage portfolio and throws it up against the agency’s insured/guaranteed database in search for loan mismatches. To do this, the agency uses “two-string match” criteria, which consist of a ...