“I am not satisfied with only making $34 million in the quarter,” said Ocwen CEO Ron Faris. “We intend to do better.”

Both Wells Fargo and JPMorgan note that they have taken significant steps to work with borrowers who have payment option ARMs and other loans that allow for negative amortization.

Wells Fargo and JPMorgan Chase account for the vast majority of bank holdings of negative amortization mortgages, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. Bank exposure to negative amortization mortgages continues to dwindle as originations of such loans largely stopped after the financial crisis. Large chunks of the holdings at Wells and Chase are due to acquisitions of Wachovia and Washington Mutual, respectively ... [Includes one data chart]

One thing investors and analysts look for is revenue growth and Ocwen Financial did not deliver. But at least all of its lending licenses are intact...

Quicken Loan’s lawsuit against the government could help provide some certainty to lenders as to the proper legal standard for evaluating compliance with FHA rules and whether loan sampling is a permissible post-endorsement review strategy, according to legal experts. The adjudication of Quicken’s case against the Department of Justice in a public forum should clarify FHA policies, procedures, and the degree of future liability risks, experts said. Quicken Loans, the top FHA lender in 2014, sued the Department of Justice in federal court in Detroit April 17, accusing it of high-pressure tactics to admit wrongdoing and of using a small sample of flawed loans as a basis for claims under the False Claims Act. Up to that time, Quicken Loans had been the subject of an ongoing DOJ probe, which began three years earlier, in relation to its FHA lending practices. Quicken also asserted that, before filing its lawsuit ...

FHA jumbo loan production dropped significantly in 2014, according to an Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of agency data. The volume of jumbo loans insured by the FHA – loan amounts exceeding $417,000 up to the national ceiling of $625,500 – fell 41.9 percent from the prior year, and 4.4 percent in the fourth quarter of 2014 from the previous quarter. FHA jumbo production for 2014 totaled $10.5 billion, with purchase loans accounting for nearly 80 percent of volume and fixed-rate loans comprising 87.1 percent of jumbos originated last year. Seventy-two percent of lenders saw their jumbo volume decline, including Provident Savings Bank, which suffered the largest year-over-year drop (84.9 percent). An analysis of FHA endorsements by loan amount show that loans above $417,000 up to $499,000 accounted for 2.12 percent of loans endorsed in the first quarter. Additionally, loans from $500,000 to ... [1 chart]

The FHA Single-Family Policy Handbook’s effective date has been changed from June 15 to Sept. 14, 2015, the agency has announced. The affected sections include the following: Doing Business with FHA – Lenders and Mortgagees; Doing Business with FHA – Other Participants – Appraiser; and Quality Control, Oversight and Compliance. The section for Origination through Post Closing/Endorsement (OTPC/E) becomes effective for FHA case numbers assigned on or after Sept. 14. All applicable existing single-family handbooks, mortgagee letters and policy documents continue to apply until the OTPC/E section becomes effective, the agency said. A number of competing initiatives prompted the change of effective date. The FHA expects lenders to be fully compliant by Sept. 14. The FHA will continue to issue mortgagee letters periodically to ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has found a defect in “transfer of custody” (TOC) processing, wherein TOC reports are being rejected when submitted to the agency. The reports are not being accepted apparently because servicers are not filling out the “Date of Confirmation/Ratification of Sale” fields, the agency said. Servicers have 15 days after loan termination to report if they want to transfer custody of a foreclosed property to the VA. Loan termination for a foreclosure and loan termination for a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure are defined separately under VA rules. The VA said the defect will be fixed once the agency’s VALERI (VA Loan Electronic Reporting Interface) Manifest 3.4 is released in June. VALERI 3.4 comes in the wake of VALERI 3.3, which the VA deployed on April 11, 2015. The updated version included a revised description of a ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is requiring servicers of FHA-insured mortgages to delay foreclosure for a year and to evaluate all borrowers for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and other similar loss-mitigation programs. The move is one of the improvements to the FHA Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, a direct-sale pilot program that allows pools of foreclosure-bound mortgages to be sold to qualified bidders. Bidders are encouraged to work with borrowers to help cure the loan – a less costly alternative to foreclosure or an REO (real estate-owned) sale. An FHA servicer can place a troubled loan into a DASP pool if the borrower is at least six months delinquent on their mortgage and the servicer has exhausted all FHA loss-mitigation options. Previously, servicers could foreclose six months after they received the loan. They were also encouraged, though not required, to ...

The FHA has automated the delivery of notices to targeted lenders that receive an “unacceptable” rating following a post-endorsement review of a sample of their FHA-insured mortgage loans. The agency’s notification process shifted from manual to electronic effective on April 27, with the deployment of a new automated system for delivering notices of unacceptable findings, or eFindings letter. The change speeds up the process of determining whether a direct-endorsement lender should be subject to an indemnification request from FHA because of faulty underwriting. The enhanced delivery process will make it easier for lenders to do business with the FHA, the agency said. The post-endorsement audit is crucial to the success of the FHA’s direct-endorsement program. The FHA performs a post-endorsement technical review (PETR) on selected cases to evaluate the risk loans pose to ...