Small lenders should be afforded equal access to the secondary market and the same execution opportunities as their larger contemporaries, and they would under a reform plan proposed by the Mortgage Bankers Association. A concept paper released by the MBA this week recommends immediate steps the Federal Housing Finance Agency can take by way of secondary market reform of the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac on behalf of lenders of all sizes, including inducing comparable guaranty fees and eliminating underwriting concessions for large lenders. The MBA called...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development will face intense scrutiny from lawmakers after revelations this week that the department may have suppressed information indicating much higher projected losses for the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund than it reported to Congress. Rep. Darrell Issa, R-CA, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, raised the issue in a May 29 letter to FHA Commissioner Carol Galante, citing suspicious email exchanges between certain top FHA officials and Tyler Yang, chairman and chief executive officer of Integrated Financial Engineering, which performed the FY 2012 actuarial audit of the fund. The letter is...
Despite the best efforts of supporters readying another push to legislatively enhance the Home Affordable Refinance Program, a proposed HARP 3.0 bill in the Senate will ultimately remain a once-interesting idea whose time has passed, say industry observers. From its initial introduction during the 112th Congress through subsequent tweaking and refiling earlier this year, the Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act of 2013, S. 249, by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Barbara Boxer, D-CA, has struggled to gain traction in the Senate. The Obama administration has mounted...
The FHA said it is working to define a qualified mortgage standard that meets the QM criteria under the Dodd-Frank Act, which takes higher priced mortgages into account.
The top contributors to the new Redwood Trust jumbo deal include George Mason Mortgage, Cole Taylor Mortgage, W.J. Bradley Mortgage Capital and PrimeLending.