Some industry analysts suggest that originations of purchase mortgages have been held back by potential borrowers’ debt-to-income ratios, which have increased along with rises in home prices. However, originations of purchase mortgages have increased in the past year as home prices have risen and it’s more than DTI ratios shutting certain borrowers out of the purchase market. Even though interest rates on mortgages remain at relatively low levels, housing affordability has been an increasing concern due to trends in home prices. Borrowers in parts of California, as well as Denver, Miami and Portland, could have difficulty qualifying for a purchase mortgage, according to a recent analysis by Zillow. Based on income, mortgage and home-value data for the fourth quarter of 2013, Zillow found...
Purchase mortgages securitized by Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie in the first quarter of 2014 were down by 76.3 percent compared with the first quarter of 2013.
The outage of Ellie Mae's Encompass systems at the end of the first quarter appears to be due to a malfunction on Ellie Mae's end, not a malicious attack.
In a statement submitted for the record to the House Financial Services Committee last week, the Mortgage Bankers Association said it remains concerned that the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule could unduly tighten mortgage credit for a significant number of creditworthy families who seek to buy or refinance a home. To improve the rule, the MBA rattled off a handful of suggestions, the first of which was to establish cure procedures. “The CFPB should adopt rules allowing lenders to cure calculation errors and other processing mistakes made while attempting to meet the qualified mortgage requirements,” the trade group said. “Without such procedures, lenders will be forced to avoid transactions at the boundaries of the points-and-fees cap, debt-to-income limits and the annual percentage...
More than 80 percent of bankers expect mortgage credit is going to be constricted because of the CFPB’s new mortgage rules, which took effect in January, according to the results of the latest Real Estate Lending Survey from the American Bankers Association. More specifically, in discussing the impact of the ability-to-repay/qualified mortgage rules on credit availability in the market generally, 41 percent said there will be a measurable reduction in credit availability across all mortgage lending segments. Forty percent said there will be a measurable reduction in credit availability in the non-QM lending segments only, and 20 percent said there will be no measurable impact on mortgage lending levels, regardless of QM or non-QM classification. When asked to characterize the...
RSS