The U.S. Department of Agriculture Rural Housing Service has issued guidance detailing requirements for refinancing its direct and guaranteed rural-housing loans. Direct and guaranteed are both Section 502 loan programs but are different from each other. The lender for guaranteed home loans is a privately owned thrift, bank or mortgage company, which is also the servicer of the loan. The lender for the direct program is the RHS, while USDA Rural Development, which includes RH, is the servicer. Guaranteed borrowers are capped at 115 percent of the area median income while income levels for direct borrowers must not exceed 80 percent of AMI. Guaranteed borrowers are not eligible for payment assistance, which can lower the interest rate on the mortgage to as low as 1 percent. The assistance is for direct borrowers and is based on borrower income as a percentage of AMI. Finally, borrower protections differ ...
It’s official: The Treasury Department’s goal is to reduce the footprint of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Who says so? Treasury counselor Craig Phillips...
Expanded-credit products look to be a ray of sunshine in an otherwise gloomy mortgage market. Originations of the loans increased in the first quarter of 2018 while production in many other product categories declined, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. An estimated $10.1 billion of expanded-credit mortgages were originated in the first quarter of 2018, up 3.1 percent from the previous quarter and a 13.5 percent ... [Includes one data chart]
Demand for jumbo mortgages was expected to decline due to various provisions included in tax reform legislation but applications for jumbos didn’t dip in early 2018, according to CoreLogic. The analytics firm tracked loan applications in high-cost areas, concentrated in California and the northeast. Applications for purchase mortgages in the first quarter of 2018 were compared with trends seen in the prior four years. “We didn’t observe any meaningful change in purchase loan application ...
Reverse mortgage lenders started out strong in the first three month of 2018 with a 19.2 percent increase in Home Equity Conversion Mortgage production from the previous period. HECM endorsements totaled $5.4 billion in the first quarter, with purchase reverse loans accounting for the bulk of originations, 81.9 percent. First quarter production was up 18.5 percent from the same period last year. Meanwhile, HECM mortgage-backed securities issuance totaled $2.97 billion for the quarter, down from $3.25 billion in the prior quarter, Ginnie Mae data showed. The top five HECM originators in sequential order – American Advisors Group, Reverse Mortgage Funding, One Reverse Mortgage, Liberty Home Equity Solutions, and Synergy One Lending – accounted for $1.66 billion, or 30.8 percent, of total production during the first quarter. American Advisors maintained its top ranking with $841.4 million of HECM loans, which ... [Charts]
Issuance of mortgage securities backed by USDA loans dropped during the first three months of 2018. Approximately $4.03 billion of rural housing loans with a USDA guarantee were delivered in Ginnie Mae MBS during the first quarter, down 18.3 percent from the previous quarter. Agency data also showed an 11.7 percent decline in USDA securitization volume from the same period a year ago. Rural housing loans accounted for 1.5 percent of all loans securitized in Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae pools and 2.8 percent of loans with private or government-backed mortgage insurance. Purchase loans comprised the bulk of USDA loans that were delivered into Ginnie MBS pools. PennyMac knocked Freedom Mortgage out of first place with a total of $753.3 million in securitized USDA loans despite a 10.4 percent decline in production. Freedom Mortgage accounted for $523.3 million of USDA loans pooled in ... [Charts]
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