The U.S. Department of Agriculture wants to begin charging lenders a fee on each guaranteed rural-housing home loan beginning Jan. 2, 2019, to fund future information-technology upgrades. In a notice published in the July 13 Federal Register, the agency said it expects to levy a $25 user fee for using the Rural Housing Service’s automated loan-guarantee systems. Comments are due Sept. 11, 2018The fee collection is authorized under the 2016 Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act as a “technology fee” to improve program delivery and “reduce burden to the public.” The authorized fee can be up to $50 per loan. It will be collected at closing. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has been trying unsuccessfully to obtain authority from Congress to charge a similar fee to modernize its aging information technology. The USDA said it would notify lenders before the ...
The Mortgagee Review Board’s improvement of its processes and use of administrative actions has greatly eased its backlog of lender recertification cases, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s internal watchdog. An audit by HUD’s inspector general found a vastly improved enforcement of MRB mandates and application of penalties to lenders compared to previous findings. An analysis of the board’s FY 2016 activities found, among other things, that 19 lenders with the same violation received the same penalty. The report attributed the change to the board’s decision to assign staff to implement recommendations in the IG’s evaluation report in May 2009. The 2009 audit raised concerns about the speed of the MRB process, the number of cases on which the board rules, and the magnitude of penalties it levies. The MRB rules on cases against FHA lenders where there ...
More than half of FHA-insured loans analyzed for material defects have been mitigated over a 12-month period, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s latest quarterly loan-review analysis. Approximately 31,396 loans were analyzed over four quarters for possible defects, beginning in the third quarter of 2017 and ending the second quarter of 2018. Approximately 59.8 percent of the reviewed loans were initially deemed unacceptable. HUD data showed that most, 54.1 percent, of the loans reviewed have been successfully mitigated. The report provides a quarter-by-quarter snapshot of the FHA’s Loan Review System results. Net defects represent outcomes after lenders have implemented methods and techniques to mitigate or remediate the initial findings. Of the reviewed loans, 24.7 percent were conforming while 15.5 percent were found to be deficient. About 0.2 percent of loans were ...
The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa earlier this month granted preliminary approval of an $11.2 million settlement in a proposed class-action against national bank JPMorgan Chase. According to the complaint filed in 2016, Chase charged and collected interest on FHA-insured loans that paid off early. Chase was either the lender or the servicer of the loans. The lawsuit, Audino et al. v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, alleges that the bank breached the promissory notes underlying the class’s FHA-insured home loans when it collected post-payment interest without providing disclosures to borrowers who made a prepayment inquiry, request for payoff figures, or tender of prepayment. Plaintiffs allege that the bank did not use the proper FHA form to provide the disclosures to consumers. Chase denies any wrongdoing and neither admits nor concedes any actual or potential fault or liability. The bank also denies it was ...
In early July, the REIT closed on its previously announced $190 million purchase of Shellpoint Partners, an acquisition that includes mortgage banking firm New Penn Financial.
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