The Department of Housing and Urban Development has notified states receiving federal funding for recovery efforts from last year’s disastrous hurricanes to take into account the rising sea level when rebuilding in flood-prone areas. The directive appears to follow Obama-era mandates requiring federally funded infrastructure projects to factor climate change and rising sea level when building in areas that could be vulnerable to flooding. However, six months ago, before Hurricane Harvey ravaged Texas, President Trump, a non-believer in climate change, rescinded the Federal Flood Risk Management Standard established by President Obama in 2015. There was concern that things would revert to the pre-hurricane days when federal funds were wasted on bad infrastructure, said Rob Moore, a senior policy analyst at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “But HUD is doing the ...
IG Looking into Role Secretary’s Family Plays at HUD. The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s inspector general is looking into the role members of Secretary Ben Carson’s family have played at the agency, CNN reported this week. According to the report, Carson himself called for the IG review following an earlier Washington Post report that HUD officials are raising ethics questions about the activities of Carson’s son and daughter-in-law at the agency, including helping to organize a listening tour for the new secretary in Baltimore last year. HUD’s lawyers reportedly warned Carson of a potential violation of federal ethics rules, according to an internal memo the Post obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. Ginnie Mae MBS Outstanding Increases to $1.9 Trillion. Ginnie Mae’s mortgage backed-securities issuance totaled $36.4 billion in January, which included ...
In a new public disclosure, General Electric said it could face legal action from the Justice Department following an investigation into WMC Mortgage, a mortgage firm it once controlled...
In direct rebuke to Richard Cordray’s interpretation, the court held that a reasonable payment is bona fide regardless of whether a referral was also involved in the transaction.
A number of lenders are trying to grow the expanded-credit mortgage market, but top producers in the sector saw an overall decline in originations last year, according to a new ranking by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The 15 top lenders originated $40.96 billion of expanded-credit mortgages last year, down 16.3 percent from 2016. The ECM category consists mostly of non-qualified mortgages and nonprime/Alt A loans that aren’t eligible for sale to the agencies ... [Includes one data chart]
The federal budget plan released by the Trump administration last week recommended increasing the guarantee fees charged by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Higher g-fees would help non-agency lenders compete with pricing offered by the government-sponsored enterprises, according to the Trump administration. Currently, a 10 basis point fee is added to the GSEs’ g-fees to help support a 2011 payroll tax cut. The fee is scheduled to expire at the end of 2021 and will ...
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