FHA/VA lender Castle & Cooke Mortgage is embarking on a major expansion that could boost their standing in the government-backed market if things work out as planned. The Salt Lake City-based retail lender is in the midst of an aggressive expansion plan to be in 48 states by the end of 2016, according to Adam Thorpe, who was named president and chief operating officer in late 2014. C&C’s government-backed lending activities are mostly in the West with licenses to operate in 18 states. Recently the company, which entered the mortgage market in 2005, opened a new branch office in Anaheim, CA, bringing to 36 the number of C&C branch offices across the country. Orange County and the Southern California housing market are among the priciest in the nation, and the high demand and lower inventory in those areas can be good for government and ...
HUD Re-Offers Single-Family Loans to Investors. Due to the required release of a Bidder Supplement for Single-Family Loan Sale 2015-1, the Department of Housing and Urban Development re-offered all pools in SFLS 2015-1 on July 16. The offering included National Pools and Neighborhood Stabilization Outcome Pools (NSOs). The NSOs include one pool for which only nonprofit bidders or local-government agencies were allowed to bid. Such pools consist of loans in areas that have been hard hit with foreclosures or that have experienced an economic downturn. The final NSO pool areas include Chicago; Newark, NJ; Camden, NJ; Nassau and Suffolk Counties, NY; Baltimore; and Philadelphia. The NSO pool for Detroit was earmarked for nonprofit and local-government bidders. Sellers Bring $1.53 Billion Servicing Offering to Market. Denver-based Phoenix Capital is in the market with a ...
The Federal Home Loan Bank’s Mortgage Partnership Finance (MPF) Program has removed certain barriers to streamline refinancing of government-backed mortgages. Effective on July 6, 2015, the MPF no longer requires minimum FICO score, maximum loan-to-value ratios or appraisals for FHA streamlined refis, VA Interest Rate Reduction Refinance loans and rural housing home loans with a U.S. Department of Agriculture guarantee. The MPF program’s participating financial institutions (PFIs) may now originate and underwrite streamline refis based solely on the requirements of the FHA, VA or the USDA’s Rural Housing Service. The program currently requires borrower and co-borrower income for government loan streamline refis for the purpose of loan presentment. “Presentment” refers to the right to require a lender to demand payment of amounts ...
A multi-million dollar false claim lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice against Wells Fargo in 2012 appears headed to trial unless both sides agree to renegotiate a settlement. Brought under the federal False Claims Act, the lawsuit has moved on to the discovery phase of the litigation following a failed attempt by the parties to reach a settlement. The DOJ has wielded the FCA effectively in the past couple of years in efforts to recover losses from lenders that allegedly committed loan fraud against the FHA. A string of FCA lawsuits against FHA lenders has resulted in approximately $4.5 billion in recoveries for the government. The 2012 lawsuit alleged that Wells Fargo misled the FHA as to the quality of underwriting on 6,320 FHA-insured loans, which later caused approximately $190 million in losses to the agency’s mortgage insurance fund. Wells Fargo has denied the allegations and maintains that, as a ...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s proposal to remove a key disclosure in a standard HUD/VA form that comes with a residential mortgage closing document is getting flak from the mortgage industry and from some members of Congress. Leading Democrats on the Senate Banking and House Financial Services committees are pushing HUD to reconsider the proposal. They fear the proposed change would make it easier for lenders that have engaged in criminal behavior to re-enter the FHA and VA markets and continue their illegal lending practices. Among other things, HUD’s proposal would eliminate the requirement that FHA lenders certify on each loan application that they are not, or have not recently been, subject to certain charges or penalties. In their letter, Senators Sherrod Brown, D-OH, and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, and Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, urged HUD to ...
Department of Housing and Urban Development program staff and the agency’s inspector general are reportedly at loggerheads over an IG recommendation to deny FHA insurance to loans that receive downpayment assistance from programs funded through premium-pricing mechanisms. Responding to critics, the HUD OIG is standing by its audit findings, which could force the HUD deputy secretary to intervene in order to resolve the issues raised by the audit report and restore lender confidence. The report’s recommendation has alarmed lenders that participate in downpayment assistance “gift” programs run by housing finance agencies (HFAs). This prompted Ed Golding, HUD’s principal deputy assistant secretary for housing and head of the FHA, to issue a clarification of the FHA’s position on the issue. Golding’s note reaffirmed FHA’s support for certain downpayment assistance programs (DAPs), “like those run by ...
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is considering revising income documentation standards to help borrowers that have nontraditional sources of income, according to Richard Cordray, the director of the agency. At a hearing last week by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, Sen. Mark Warner, D-VA, raised concerns about the income documentation standards included in Appendix Q of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule. Non-agency lenders ...
Industry participants largely support a plan from the Federal Housing Finance Agency for adjustments to the conforming loan limit. The $417,000 loan limit applicable to the government-sponsored enterprises could be increased as soon as January, depending on house-price appreciation trends over the next few months. The FHFA’s proposal said the regulator planned to use the “expanded data” house price index that the agency has published since 2011 to ...
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