Some legal observers believe if Trump had acted first and not hesitated in picking Mulvaney, English would never have been named by Cordray and this whole mini-crisis avoided.
The 30-day delinquency rate increased significantly as of the end of the third quarter of 2017, with hurricanes taking a toll on mortgage performance, among other factors.
Any chance of a mortgage-insurance premium reduction in the near future has dimmed in the wake of an actuarial report placing the FHA insurance fund on shakier ground at the end of FY 2017. One clear thing from the report released on Nov. 15 was that FHA’s flagship single-family home mortgage program continued to grow stronger with an economic net worth of $38.4 billion in fiscal 2017. In contrast, problems persisted in the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage portfolio, driving the program’s economic value down by another $6 billion to negative $14.5 billion. The drag HECM losses inflicted on the MMIF has renewed calls to separate the ailing portfolio from the fund, which can only be accomplished by legislation. Right now, the reverse mortgage issue is not even on Congress’ legislative agenda. HECM losses also caused the fund’s economic net worth and capital reserve ratio to decline in fiscal year ...
The Department of Veterans Affairs and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have issued a joint warning to servicemembers and veterans about VA refinancing offers that sound too good to be true. There is a good chance that borrowers with a VA loan have already received unsolicited offers to refinance their mortgages even just months after closing, the agencies said in their first “warning order” (WARNO). Many of these refi solicitations promise extremely low rates, thousands of dollars in cash back, skipped mortgage payments, no out-of-pocket costs and no waiting period, the agencies noted. The VA and the CFPB said lenders offering VA refinances may use aggressive and potentially misleading advertising and sales tactics. “Lenders may advertise a rate just to get you to respond or you may receive a VA mortgage refi offer that provides limited benefit to you while adding thousands of dollars to your loan balance,” the agencies warned. Even though the VA prohibits a lender from advertising skip payments on ...
A former FHA commissioner has recommended raising the agency’s capital reserve ratio to 3 percent, to make FHA stronger and more resilient. Carol Galante, who served two years as FHA commissioner and assistant secretary for housing in the second term of the Obama administration, laid out her proposal along with other recommendations in a paper that she co-authored. Housing-finance reform without a retooled FHA could threaten families’ access to homeownership and increase risk to taxpayers, contrary to the goals of reform, said Galante, currently the faculty director of the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at University of California Berkeley. In her paper, Mission Critical: Retooling FHA to Meet America’s Housing Needs, Galante spelled out the changes necessary to help FHA perform its complementary and countercyclical role in the nation’s housing markets. Galante called for ...