President Obama this week released his agenda for creating economic opportunity for millennials, including greater access to mortgage credit through FHA. While the economy has recovered and there has been some improvement in the housing market, millennials are on a much slower pace toward homeownership than previous generations, the president said. Many are in rental housing, ready to become homeowners but are locked out by the tough, restrictive lending environment, he added. Millennials – identified as those born between 1982 and 2004, also known as Generation Y – are finding it harder to purchase homes because of lender overlays, high mortgage insurance premiums and high downpayment requirements. It also has been difficult for anyone with a credit score below 680 to obtain a purchase-mortgage loan. In his agenda, Obama expressed concern over the ...

FHA to Extend Short Refi Program. The FHA has announced its intent to extend its Short Refinance Program for borrowers in negative equity positions. A mortgagee letter will be issued soon to announce the extension. Feedback Period extended for Draft Servicing Section of Proposed Single Family Handbook. The FHA is extending the comment period for the draft servicing section of the Single Family Housing Policy Handbook through Nov. 14, 2014 to allow stakeholders additional time to study and comment on the proposed section. The original deadline date was Oct. 17. CFPB Updates Reverse Mortgage Guide. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau recently updated its reverse mortgage guide on its website to account for recent changes made by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to its Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program. The updated guide highlights new limits to ...

A source close to Horne confirmed the news and said he would be serving as an “executive advisor” to Wingspan, at least over the short term. But this source warned that the situation was "fluid."

No reason for panic yet: Only two jumbo (MBS) borrowers are currently more than 60 days delinquent and the foreclosure process has yet to start for either.

MountainView, a firm known mostly for the market it makes in mortgage servicing rights, is branching out into non-QM lending, but company officials cautioned that its effort will start small. Moreover, a spokesman for the firm clarified that loans acquired through its new “Peak Program” will meet the ability-to-repay rule requirements, including the non-QM loans. “We expect...

The Mortgage Bankers Association is on a mission to convince banking regulators to revisit the Basel III capital standards and to change the cap on how much mortgage servicing rights can count toward Tier I capital. The way things stand now, MSRs will be capped at 10 percent of capital when the rule is fully phased in, with the excess deducted from a depository’s “common equity.” Previously, the cap was 100 percent. In a draft letter to the Federal Reserve, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the MBA argues...

Another refi boomlet? One Long Island-based mortgage executive told us this: “Locks doubled from the day before and are up 30 percent over the previous 10 days”…

Ethos Lending, a QM and non-QM lender, is marketing itself to third-party loan officers as the “broker advocate."

Bonds backed by nonperforming residential mortgages could reach $6 billion this year. But all of the deals are "private."

New York Law School professor Richard Epstein took issue with Judge Lamberth’s ruling that HERA doesn’t take away any “cognizable property rights.”