Ginnie Mae securitization of single-family mortgages backed by rural housing loans with the U.S. Department of Agriculture guarantee rose in the second quarter of 2017 and on a year-over-year basis. Issuance of securitized USDA loans increased 9.0 percent from the previous quarter and was up 17.1 percent halfway through 2017 compared to first six months last year. Securitized rural housing loans accounted for $5.0 billion of total Ginnie MBS issuance in the second quarter and $9.5 billion of Ginnie MBS issued during the first six months of 2017. Freedom Mortgage led the market with $1.8 billion. Although down 1.4 percent from the first quarter, Freedom reported a whopping tenfold increase for the first six months from the same period last year. PennyMac maintained its second-place ranking with $1.4 billion, up significantly on a quarterly and year-over-year basis, while Wells Fargo, in third place, closed out the first half with $673.8 million in USDA-backed MBS. Chase Home Finance climbed ... [Chart]
Compliance attorneys are calling for legislative changes to prevent possible misuse of the False Claims Act that could result in settlements that could be financially devastating to mortgage lenders. Concerns about possible government misuse of FCA provisions are evident in the statutory qualifiers that are already embedded in the existing statute, according to a recent analysis by Krista Cooley and Laurence Platt, attorneys and partners in the Washington, DC, office of Mayer Brown. The qualifiers are in the main provision of the FCA that the Department of Justice has used against mortgage lenders and servicers, the attorneys said. The provision imposes liability on any person who “knowingly presents, or causes to be presented, a false or fraudulent claim for payment or approval” or “knowingly makes, uses, or causes to be made or used, a false record or statement material to a false or ...
The FHA will provide lenders that originate Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans the option to view and print unsigned HECM counseling certificates in FHA Connection starting Sept. 18, 2017. While the lender may still take the initial loan application, the lender can only begin to process it once the counseling is complete, as evidenced by a completed HECM counseling certificate that contains signatures of both the counselor and borrower. Lenders that chose to use this option will be required to establish procedures to obtain and document authorization from the HECM borrower to access the counseling certificate in FHA Connection. In addition, lenders must certify that a borrower authorization to view the counseling certificate was obtained. Lenders must follow the guidance on processing HECM loans contained in the HUD Handbook, the FHA said. To access HECM counseling certificates, lenders will ...
DOL’s Overtime Rule Dead – For Now. A federal district court in Texas recently struck down an Obama administration proposal that would have made millions of people eligible for overtime pay. Judge Amos Mazzant of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas on Aug. 31 invalidated the DOL’s pending overtime regulations, which would have raised the salary threshold exemptions under the Fair Labor Standards Act. The Obama administration finalized the proposed regulations in May last year but was unable to implement them after Mazzant granted a request for injunction filed by the Plano Chamber of Commerce and 55 other business groups last November. The business entities opposed the proposed rule, which would have raised the minimum salary threshold necessary to qualify for the FLSA’s overtime exemption. The salary threshold would have increased from ...
Rob Zimmer, a former Freddie Mac executive: “Republicans run this town, obviously, and there is no way they want to be identified as the party of taxpayer bailouts for large financial institutions.”
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