The Department of Justice shows no sign of letting up in its pursuit of FHA lenders that originate improperly underwritten mortgages that later result in significant taxpayer losses. MetLife Home Loans, which is no longer in operation, became the newest addition to the government’s growing list of financial institutions that opted to settle allegations brought under the False Claims Act and the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act, in connection with the origination and servicing of FHA-insured mortgages. Under the agreement, MetLife will pay $123.5 million to resolve allegations that its predecessor it “[turned] a blind eye to mortgage loans that did not meet basic FHA underwriting standards,” and stuck the FHA and taxpayers with the bill when the loans defaulted. In June 2013, MetLife Bank merged into MetLife Home Loans, a mortgage finance company ...
The FHA’s recent decision to reduce its annual mortgage insurance premium by 50 basis points pushes back the agency’s timeline for attaining the 2 percent capital reserve requirement by 2016 and limits private mortgage insurance companies’ ability to serve borrowers with higher loan-to-value ratios, warned MI industry representatives. Testifying before the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Housing and Insurance, Clifford Rossi, chief economist of Radian Group, said the FHA sought to justify the premium cut by saying it far exceeded the amounts necessary to cover new FHA-insured mortgages. “But this ignores the higher expected losses on earlier insured loans,” he said. Comparing lifetime premiums on current borrowers to their projected average lifetime losses is not a meaningful comparison for an insurance portfolio comprised of borrower risk profiles over book years subject to different economic scenarios, Rossi argued. Moreover, comparing premiums to average losses overlooks ...
Ocwen Financial, the largest servicer of nonprime mortgages, continues to face regulatory and legal pressure as investors voted to terminate the company as servicer of subprime mortgage-backed securities they own. The company said its servicing of two MBS with a combined unpaid principal balance of $260 million is being transferred. The termination vote was allowed due to downgrades to Ocwen’s servicer ratings. Some 119 non-agency MBS ... [Includes one data chart]
The Federal Housing Finance Agency released requirements that will likely pave the way for increased sales of nonperforming mortgages by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FHFA said it has approved of sales of nonperforming loans by the government-sponsored enterprises to reduce the number of severely delinquent loans held in their inventories and to transfer risk to the private sector. Freddie has completed two sales of nonperforming ... [Includes one data chart]
The FHA bucked a decreasing delinquency-rate trend for all other types of loan by posting an increase in past-due loans during the last three months of 2014, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association’s latest national delinquency survey. On a seasonally adjusted basis, the overall delinquency rate fell 17 bps for all loan types to 5.68 percent, MBA data showed. Data compiled by the Inside Mortgage Finance Large Servicer Delinquency Index also showed a sizeable decline of 32.7 basis points in the fourth quarter from the prior quarter. The 24 servicers covered by the index had a delinquency rate of 6.34 percent in the fourth quarter, down from 7.59 percent in the same period the prior year. The IMF data are not seasonally adjusted. In contrast, the FHA delinquency rate rose to 9.73 percent in the fourth quarter, up 4 bps from the previous quarter, according to the MBA. On the other hand, loans with a ...
Although the new rules for surviving spouses of borrowers with FHA-insured reverse mortgages address many of the issues raised by non-borrowing spouses, some questions remain unanswered, according to legal experts. The guidance in Mortgagee Letter 2015-03 provides insufficient answers to the issues it was meant to address, said Robert Couch, a partner with the Birmingham, AL, law firm of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings and former general counsel at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Servicers should take note of those issues and seek further clarification, he said. Issued on Jan. 29, the guidance provides a way for lenders to proceed after a borrower with a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loan dies and is survived by a non-borrowing spouse. It allows a lender to assign to HUD HECMs that are in default due to the death of the borrower, as long as certain ...
In less than 10 months, a volume-heavy private-label origination deal that PHH Mortgage has with Wall Street giant Merrill Lynch is set to expire, potentially blowing a hole in its production machine. According to a recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, PHH acknowledges that “there can be no assurances that the agreement will be renewed on favorable terms, if at all.” If the deal were to be cancelled, PHH could see...
Most companies engaged in mortgage banking made a profit last year despite a rough first quarter, but nearly all participants earned less than in 2013. A new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter, found that a diverse group of 30 public companies reported a combined $13.942 billion in mortgage-banking income for 2014. Different lenders report these earnings differently, but they generally include production, servicing, secondary market and the net effect of hedges and legal costs. For the 30 lenders, mortgage-banking earnings for the year were...[Includes one data chart]
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