The Federal Reserve’s opinion survey of senior loan officers has grown in scope to include some new mortgage categories, including qualified mortgage underwriting and non-QM underwriting. In brief, the Fed found that underwriting is easing slightly as demand slips modestly. “The January 2015 survey revised and expanded the residential mortgage loan categories to reflect the CFPB’s qualified mortgage rules and provide additional detail on important developments in the residential mortgage market both now and in the future,” the survey said. In particular, the survey included the following seven mutually exclusive categories of residential home-purchase mortgage loans: government-sponsored enterprise-eligible residential mortgages; government residential mortgages; QM non-jumbo, non-GSE-eligible residential mortgages; QM jumbo residential mortgages; non-QM jumbo residential mortgages; non-QM non-jumbo residential mortgages ...

OIG Expects to Finish Nine Audits, Evaluations of the CFPB This Quarter. The CFPB’s Office of Inspector General has a batch of ongoing projects related to the bureau that it expects to complete sometime during the first quarter, according to the OIG’s latest work plan, released early this week.Among the projects are audits of the CFPB’s contract management process, its diversity and inclusion processes, and it headquarters renovation project. Other projects with a first quarter 2015 completion timeframe are audits of the CFPB’s public consumer complaint database, the bureau’s space-planning activities, and the CFPB’s Tableau system, an application used to develop, publish, and view business intelligence data. Also up for completion this quarter is an evaluation of the CFPB’s ...

To bring the ABS to market the credit enhancement on the transaction is a hefty 23.50 percent.

Fannie, Freddie and Ginnie produced $85.18 billion of new single-family MBS during the month of January.

Meanwhile, a separate survey conducted by Inside Mortgage Finance found 17 percent of respondents holding the belief that the premium cut will have little effect...

The Mortgage Bankers Association has secured a favorable clarification from the Financial Accounting Standards Board regarding the treatment of seriously delinquent mortgages in Ginnie Mae pools. The clarification was requested after one of the Big Four accounting firms began requiring lenders that service 90 days plus delinquent loans to put the loans on the balance sheet with an offsetting liability even if they do not intend to buy the loans out of the pool. The requirement would have been...[Includes one data chart]

With Ocwen about to unload a massive amount of servicing rights will the company still need to have such a large back-office operation in India?

After loosening every month for more than a year, underwriting on jumbo mortgages started to tighten in mid-2014, according to new data from the Mortgage Bankers Association and AllRegs. In the past three months, jumbo underwriting has started to loosen again and standards are the loosest they have been since early 2011.Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions announced that it launched a mini-correspondent offering for non-agency nonprime ... [Includes three briefs]

Federal housing regulators once again sought authority from Congress to impose an administrative fee on lenders to support information technology improvements and administrative functions at the FHA – a bid Congress rejected last year. As part of President Obama’s FY 2016 budget, the Department of Housing and Urban Development is proposing to charge lenders up to $30 million in fees to cover FHA salaries and expenses and information technology upgrades. The IT component will focus on strengthening FHA’s risk-management efforts through expanded quality-control reviews, enhanced tools and other risk-management initiatives. Separately, the president requests an appropriation of $174 million in administrative costs to enable the FHA to implement a risk management and program-support process – both critical for FHA’s oversight of ...

Many industry executives are not impressed with the FHA’s 50 basis point premium reduction, suggesting that the new pricing would not have that big an impact on the mortgage market, according to a new survey by the Collingwood Group. Conducted from Jan. 12 to 21, 2015, the monthly survey said 47 percent thought that President Obama’s estimate of the number of borrowers benefiting from the cut – 250,000 – is too high. Approximately 34 percent said the estimate was “on the mark” and 19 percent said it was too low. In addition, 25 percent of respondents thought the premium reduction was more motivated by politics than a desire to implement a major change in the market. Those respondents who said “too high” also noted that FHA underwriting remains tough and that price differences are not large enough to steer borrowers to FHA. Respondents, however, agreed that ...