With Ocwen about to unload a massive amount of servicing rights will the company still need to have such a large back-office operation in India?

After loosening every month for more than a year, underwriting on jumbo mortgages started to tighten in mid-2014, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association and AllRegs. In the past three months, jumbo underwriting has started to loosen again and standards are the loosest they have been since early 2011.Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions announced that it launched a mini-correspondent offering for non-agency nonprime ... [Includes three briefs]

Federal housing regulators once again sought authority from Congress to impose an administrative fee on lenders to support information technology improvements and administrative functions at the FHA – a bid Congress rejected last year. As part of President Obama’s FY 2016 budget, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is proposing to charge lenders up to $30 million in fees to cover FHA salaries and expenses and information technology upgrades. The IT component will focus on strengthening FHA’s risk-management efforts through expanded quality-control reviews, enhanced tools and other risk-management initiatives. Separately, the president requests an appropriation of $174 million in administrative costs to enable the FHA to implement a risk management and program-support process – both critical for FHA’s oversight of ...

Many industry executives are not impressed with the FHA’s 50 basis point premium reduction, suggesting that the new pricing would not have that big an impact on the mortgage market, according to a new survey by the Collingwood Group. Conducted from Jan. 12 to 21, 2015, the monthly survey said 47 percent thought that President Obama’s estimate of the number of borrowers benefiting from the cut – 250,000 – is too high. Approximately 34 percent said the estimate was “on the mark” and 19 percent said it was too low. In addition, 25 percent of respondents thought the premium reduction was more motivated by politics than a desire to implement a major change in the market. Those respondents who said “too high” also noted that FHA underwriting remains tough and that price differences are not large enough to steer borrowers to FHA. Respondents, however, agreed that ...

Reverse mortgage lenders now have the option to delay calling a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage due and payable where there is an eligible non-borrowing spouse and a case number assigned prior to Aug. 4, 2014. A delay would postpone foreclosure triggered by the death of the HECM borrower or the last surviving borrower and allow the qualified, non-borrowing spouse to stay in the house for a certain period until the HECM is resolved. Under revised FHA guidance, reverse mortgage lenders are allowed to assign eligible HECMs to the Department of Housing and Urban Development upon the death of the borrower. They have the option of foreclosing in accordance with the contract as endorsed or choose the “mortgagee optional election assignment (MOE).” MOE means the optional assignment selected by a lender for a HECM loan with an assigned FHA case number prior to ...

Overall, 2014 was not a good year for FHA originations as tight underwriting and high loan costs narrowed the band of borrowers able to qualify for an FHA-insured residential loan, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of agency data. FHA total endorsements dropped to $35.2 billion, an 8.1 percent drop in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter, with fixed-rate and adjustable-rate mortgages declining by 7.9 percent and 12.7 percent, respectively. FHA purchase originations suffered a decline of 11.3 percent. There was one bright spot: FHA refinances rose a meager 2.2 percent while the percentage of conventional loans that refinanced into FHA saw a more substantial lift of 13.0 percent quarter to quarter. FHA baseline lending (below $417,000) saw volume drop 8.4 percent in the fourth quarter. FHA jumbo loan amounts up to the statutory high-cost loan limit and ... [ 2 charts ]

The FHA has updated the contents of a notice to delinquent borrowers regarding the availability of approved housing counseling and provided a new template for lenders to explain, in simple terms, the benefits of housing counseling. The latest guidance, Revised Notification to Homeowners of Availability of Housing Counseling Services (Mortgagee Letter 2015-04), also provides a description of counseling services to delinquent borrowers. The revised requirements supplement those outlined in previous mortgagee letters and certain provisions in the HUD handbook. Lenders must comply with the new requirements by April 4, 2015. FHA lenders must provide delinquent borrowers with a notice about the availability of housing counseling by an approved provider and the principal mortgage lender. However, there is no standard language for such notices Hence, the FHA has ...

Most importantly, the ATR proposal would exclude from that limit loans held in portfolio.

In its 8-K filing with the SEC, Ocwen revealed that during 2014, state regulators commenced 46 examinations “of one or more of our areas of operation…”

Two Harbors is a member of the FHLB system via a captive insurance affiliate. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is contemplating snuffing out this avenue of membership...