Many condominium properties continue to struggle to meet stringent FHA requirements while many condo projects are being denied approval despite the easing of FHA approval requirements in recent years. Panelists at a recent National Association of Realtors conference in New Orleans said condos are often the most affordable homeownership option for first-time homebuyers, single borrowers and senior citizens, especially when purchased with FHA financing. Condominium loans are among the strongest performing loans in the FHA portfolio, they added. However, FHA data show that ...
Imprecise rules, triple-damage claims and increasingly political enforcement of agency rules could make it more dangerous for lenders to do business with the FHA than to originate non-qualified mortgage loans, according to a top compliance expert. Larry Platt, a partner with K&L Gates, said that when lenders originate and underwrite FHA loans they are subjected to rules that are unevenly applied and politically enforced. It is a prescription for a financial bloodbath, especially if you add to it the False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, he added. Throwing the Department of Justice into the mix ...
FY 2013 Actuarial Review of Insurance Fund Out in Mid-December. The Department of Housing and Urban Development expects to issue the long-anticipated FHA FY 2013 independent review of the state of the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund during or before the middle of December. The report’s release was delayed due to the three-week government shutdown in October. The report will show FHA taking a mandatory appropriation of $1.7 billion to close out FY 2013. HUD has clarified that the draw is an accounting transfer required to close out the FHA’s FY 2013 books and not a reflection of ...
The sudden, dramatic increase in flood insurance premiums – some by as much as 1,000 percent – are leaving homeowners and prospective homebuyers stunned.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are designing a securitization framework that will work for today’s fully-guaranteed residential MBS as well as securities with a partial government guaranty or none at all, according to an update released this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency. Among the initiatives set for the government-sponsored enterprises by the FHFA is the development of a contractual and disclosure framework designed to give MBS investors more clarity and confidence about what they’re…
A rough measure of production profitability, the ratio of production income to origination volume, fell from 179 basis points in the second quarter to just 84 bps in the third. Back in the Wonderland of early 2012, this ratio was 203 bps.
During the first nine months of 2013, there were 512 different companies that sold mortgages to the government-sponsored enterprises that had been originated by loan correspondents of mortgage brokers. Some 324 of these lenders were involved in the broker-wholesale channel.
Elsewhere, in the report FHFA claims significant progress has been made on the development and initial testing of the GSEs’ common securitization platform.
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