Staff and members of the Mortgage Bankers Association met with the CFPB in recent weeks to discuss how to determine the “interest rate without any discount” that is used to calculate the starting point at which bona fide discount points can be used to reduce the rate and are eligible for exclusion from the qualified mortgage’s points-and-fees cap. Specifically, MBA asked if the interest rate to be used is the rate unique to each consumer or is simply a rate from a standard rate sheet. The trade group also wanted to know what the...

Bank holdings of home-equity loans continue to decline, with mixed performance trends. Regulators warn that home-equity lines of credit originated before the financial crisis are a particular concern as the loans are set to reach their amortization periods. Banks and thrifts held $1.05 trillion in HELOCs, HELOC commitments and closed-end seconds as of the end of the second quarter of 2013, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. The holdings declined by 1.9 percent ... [Includes one data chart]

Two top Democrats on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs called upon the FHA to revise its eligibility policy to enable more distressed borrowers to qualify for loan modification. Senate Banking Committee Chairman Tim Johnson, D-SD, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, urged FHA Commissioner Carol Galante in a letter to eliminate a provision that requires borrowers to be “currently employed” in order to receive loss mitigation assistance from the FHA. The FHA inserted the provision into the FHA guidelines for ...

Genworth U.S. Mortgage Insurance has stepped up its competition with the FHA in the home purchase market by announcing reduced rates and the elimination of certain overlays to make it easier for customers to deliver loans through the government-sponsored enterprises’ automatic underwriting systems. Effective on Sept. 16, the credit policy changes closely align Genworth’s requirements with those for loans approved by Fannie Mae’s Desktop Underwriter or Freddie Mac’s Loan Prospector. Specifically, Genworth will expand guidelines for its Simply Underwrite program to enable lenders to offer affordable low-downpayment financing to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has used up the $25 billion of commitment authority allocated by Congress for the FHA multifamily and healthcare programs, though mortgage insurance applications will still be accepted through Sept. 30. Firm commitments issued as of Sept. 16 will be honored and loans may be endorsed and closed up until the cutoff date, HUD said in a letter this week to program partners. HUD will be unable to issue new commitments until an FY 2014 budget for the FHA multifamily and healthcare programs is approved. All transactions requesting commitment authority between ...

Residential mortgage REITs held $327 billion of single-family MBS at the end of the second quarter, according to a new market analysis by Inside MBS & ABS.

The shift from distressed property sales to non-distressed creates opportunities for mortgage bankers because distressed properties are often purchased by investors with cash.

Fannie Mae this week hired James Kittridge, a former executive from Barclays Capital, to manage its participation in the fledgling common securitization platform project with Freddie Mac. However, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – and their regulator – continue to provide little in the way of public information on how the CSP project is progressing. The Federal Housing Finance Agency will not even confirm that it recently hired the search firm of Spencer Stuart to help find an executive to oversee work being performed by the government-sponsored enterprises and a core group of staffers at the regulator. The starting salary for the FHFA CSP post is...

It’s not a surprise that FHFA has been quiet about its not-overly popular state-level g-fee proposal, according to Robert Bostrom, a shareholder at the law firm of Greenberg Traurig and a former general counsel at Freddie Mac.

Now that PennyMac Mortgage Investment Trust has put together its first jumbo MBS, can a security collateralized by non-performing loans be far behind? “We’ve looked at it,” said a company spokesman. “We’d like to do one down the road, but we’re not there yet. For us, it will happen when the execution of NPLs is more economical.” One thing is...