Jumbo lenders continue to loosen underwriting requirements in an effort to compete for volume. Some lenders are even offering jumbos with loan-to-value ratios as high as 95 percent, while three years ago a 70 percent LTV ratio was the norm. “We’ve seen a fairly rapid loosening of standards on jumbo loans,” said Michael Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, during an event hosted this week by the Urban Institute. “They’re still tight, but now you can get a 5 percent down jumbo loan. And minimum credit scores have been coming down.” The MBA’s Mortgage Credit Availability Index has shown...
Ocwen Financial agreed to a $150 million settlement with the New York Department of Financial Services in late December. Officials at the nonbank said Ocwen’s focus will shift to non-agency servicing and originations in 2015. The settlement includes a number of provisions beyond the monetary penalty. To acquire mortgage servicing rights – the fuel for Ocwen’s dramatic growth in recent years – Ocwen must receive approval from the NYDFS and meet performance benchmarks. The NYDFS will also appoint...
Bank and thrift holdings of home-equity loans continued to decline in the third quarter of 2014, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database. However, the two top banks increased their HEL holdings from midyear, and industry analysts expect home-equity lending to continue to increase in 2015. Banks and thrifts held a total of $991.27 billion in home-equity lines of credit, HELOC commitments and closed-end second liens as of the end of the third quarter of 2014, down 0.7 percent from the previous quarter and down 3.9 percent from the third quarter of 2013. Most of the top 10 bank and thrift HEL lenders saw...[Includes one data chart]
Lenders are getting more comfortable with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule, according to industry participants. Loans that do not meet standards for qualified mortgages are only available in the non-agency market and most have been retained in portfolio to this point. Many lenders participating in a recent roundtable hosted by Standard & Poor’s said interest-only mortgages continue to be attractive products, even though the loans are non-QMs. “These loans have been originated post-crisis, and originators expect to continue lending to high-quality borrowers with substantial equity in their properties,” S&P said in a summary of the roundtable discussion. A large bank lender at the S&P roundtable said...
The Obama administration this week announced a half-percent reduction in the annual mortgage insurance premiums all borrowers will have to pay for an FHA-insured forward mortgage loan. In a press briefing, Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said the annual MIP willd be lowered from the current 1.35 percent to 0.85 percent – a difference of 50 basis points – to enable more creditworthy first-time homebuyers to purchase their homes. Approximately 250,000 new homeowners will benefit from reduced premiums over the next three years, saving them an average of $900 annually, Castro said. He further estimated that lowering the annual MIP will make homeownership more affordable for more than 2 million borrowers over the three-year period. The upfront fee of 1.75 percent and the current requirement that borrowers continue paying premiums for the life of the loan were ...
Despite reduced guaranty limits in more than 80 counties, recent changes to the VA mortgage limits in 2015 will have no material impact on veteran borrowers or hurt credit availability, according to industry analysts. In enacting the omnibus spending bill, Congress reduced the maximum size of mortgages guaranteed by the VA, matching it to the $625,500 high-cost loan limits for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA. The change took effect on Jan. 1, 2015, affecting 82 counties, some seeing as much as a 40 percent reduction in the VA loan limit. For example, loan limits in the New York area fell by 36.1 percent and in the Washington, DC, area, lenders saw a 9.7 percent decline, according to estimates by the Urban Institute. The VA home loan program does not require a downpayment and the guaranty is limited to 25 percent of the loan amount. In certain cases, the program allows a veteran to ...
The FHA rarely talks about its lender and loan review process in detail but in the latest issue of Lender Insight the agency discusses how it is done and how it selects targets for each review. FHA’s overall counterparty quality-control efforts are divided into lender-monitoring reviews, nonperforming loan reviews, post-endorsement technical reviews of performing loans, post-endorsement technical reviews of early payment defaults (EPD), early cohort claim reviews and lender self-reports. For lender-monitoring reviews, the FHA uses a targeting methodology that takes into account loan volume, default/claim rates, participation in specific FHA loan programs, servicer loss-mitigation performance and certain other factors. Loans are selected to determine compliance with FHA requirements. The Quality Assurance Division (QAD) in the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Single-Family ...
The FHA has temporarily suspended publication of its Quarterly Loan Review Findings Report, which contains the results of all post-endorsement technical reviews (PETRs) conducted by the FHA during a particular quarter. The suspension will give the FHA sufficient time to “recalibrate how the report is run” as well as improve the report, the agency explained. The report is currently published in Lender Insight, a quarterly publication that contains information from the FHA’s Office of Lender Activities and Program Compliance. Specifically, the report contains charts that divide PETRs findings into five main categories. Each chart lists the top five underwriting errors in each category for each review period. The FHA said it is working to display the results in a more user-friendly, actionable manner. It did not say when the quarterly report will be ...
Two FHA lenders have agreed to separate settlements with the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development to resolve allegations of mortgage fraud that resulted in huge losses for HUD. Golden First Mortgage Corp. and its owner/president, David Movtady, have agreed to a $36.3 million settlement with the DOJ to resolve allegations they had lied to the FHA about the quality of loans they had certified for FHA insurance since July 2007. Consequently, the agency incurred more than $12 million in losses since that time, according to court documents. Filed in April 2013 in Manhattan federal court and amended in August 2013, the government complaint sought damages and penalties under the False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act against Golden First for years of misconduct as an FHA direct-endorsement lender. Golden First was a ...
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