President Trump this week signed a short-term spending bill that would keep the government operating until Feb. 8, 2018. The bill ended a three-day shutdown after the previous spending authority for most of the government expired at midnight on Jan. 19. However, the threat of another shutdown looms. FHA and Ginnie Mae both had contingency plans in place in case the short-lived shutdown dragged on, as it had in 2013. That event lasted for 16 days, at a loss of $1.6 billion a day to the federal government. Under FHA’s emergency plan, the agency would continue to endorse new single-family forward mortgages, but not Home Equity Conversion Mortgages and Title I loans. Ginnie would reduce staffing to essential personnel but continue its secondary market operations. It would continue to remit timely payment of principal and interest to investors, grant commitment authority and support issuance of ...
Recoveries from FCA Settlements Involving FHA Loans Down Dramatically in 2017. The Department of Justice reported collecting more than $543 million in False Claims Act settlements and judgments to resolve housing and mortgage fraud complaints in FY 2017, down from $1.6 billion in FY 2016. The largest settlement of a False Claims Act case was $296 million, which involved an FHA lender and the DOJ. In September 2017, a unanimous jury in Houston, TX, found that Allied Home Mortgage Capital Corp. and Allied Home Mortgage Corp. violated the FCA and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act of 1989 by falsely certifying that thousands of high-risk, poor-quality loans were eligible for FHA insurance. The companies were also accused of originating FHA loans from more than 100 “shadow” branch offices without authorization from the ...
As earnings season got underway for publicly owned lenders, First Republic Bank, Flagstar Bank and Redwood Trust reported increased jumbo loan production in 2017. First Republic produced $11.57 billion of single-family mortgages in 2017, up 8.9 percent from the previous year. Jumbos account for a large majority of its lending. Flagstar originated $8.80 billion of jumbo loans last year, a 37.5 percent increase from 2016. And Redwood, which sources loans from correspondents, purchased ...
New Penn Financial recently introduced a new non-agency program that allows for non-qualified mortgages and alternative documentation, among other features. The SmartEdge product includes loan amounts up to $3.0 million, credit scores as low as 620, debt-to-income ratios up to 50.0 percent and loan-to-value ratios as high as 90.0 percent. New Penn is in the process of being sold to New Residential Mortgage, a real estate investment trust. SmartSelf allows ... [Includes two briefs]
An estimated $475.0 billion of new first-lien mortgages were originated in the final three months of the year, down 4.0 percent from the previous quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis and ranking.
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