The Department of Housing and Urban Development will review its current lender-certification process and defect taxonomy to address industry concerns about costly penalties and settlements arising out of False Claims Act lawsuits. In remarks at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention in Denver this week, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said the review would benefit greatly from feedback by lenders and other stakeholders in response to President Trump’s directive to all federal agencies to eliminate burdensome and duplicative regulations. Carson said HUD’s immediate concern is bringing back lenders that have exited the FHA single-family program or limited participation because of the undue risks they face from FCA enforcement. Lenders need clarity in what HUD expects from them in terms of lending and reduced exposure to outsized liability from immaterial errors, the ...

Overall denial rates for nonconventional loan applications (FHA, VA and Rural Housing Service) fell slightly in 2016 to 13.4 percent from 13.9 percent in 2015, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data showed. In the nonconventional refinancing segment, denial rates rose to 32.9 percent last year from 30.3 percent in the previous year. Approximately 23.9 percent of FHA loan applicants were denied last year while VA turned down 20.0 percent of borrowers who sought a VA loan. An estimated 14.3 percent of FHA purchase-loan applicants were turned down. VA denied 11.4 percent of its purchase-mortgage applicants although its total purchase-loan applications are far fewer compared to FHA. According to the Federal Reserve’s overview of the 2016 HMDA data, as in past years, blacks, Hispanics and “other minority” borrowers had notably higher denial rates overall compared to white borrowers. Denial rates for ...

A new “fixer-upper” affordable housing program developed by a real estate broker for the Land Bank of Kansas City, MO, may not only help lower-income borrowers purchase a home but prove to be a profitable niche for FHA 203(k) lenders. The KC Land Bank initiative extends affordable mortgage loans to homebuyers looking to purchase and rehabilitate abandoned vacant homes in 21 neighborhoods in Kansas City. The vacant residential properties are acquired through a tax foreclosure auction and the aim is to sell them to borrowers in the same neighborhood where the property is located. Financing for the purchase and rehabilitation of a Land Bank home is mostly through the FHA 203(k) program, according to Ted Ihde, a licensed real-estate broker who developed the program and markets the homes through neighborhood housing groups. The program addresses an urban problem that ...

Legislation was introduced this week to repeal the FHA’s life-of-loan requirement and reinstate a previous policy of requiring borrowers to pay premiums until the outstanding principal balance reaches 78 percent of the original home value. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA, ranking member of the House Financial Services Committee, introduced the Making FHA More Affordable Act so that families would not have to keep paying mortgage insurance premiums for the life of their FHA-insured loan. Up until June 3, 2013, FHA was aligned with the private mortgage insurance industry in charging premiums only until the outstanding principal balance reached 78 percent of the original home value. The FHA first announced its intention to require life-of-loan premium payments in January 2013, allowing the agency to collect more premium revenue to bolster its ailing Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. FHA’s life-of-loan policy ...

CoreLogic to Provide Solutions to Cut FHA, MMIF Losses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has chosen CoreLogic to provide valuation and workflow solutions to mitigate losses to the FHA and the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Under an agreement with HUD, CoreLogic will provide support to determine the best strategies and plans for the valuation and disposition of distressed and real estate-owned properties in HUD’s inventory. Individual Condominium Loan Processing in the VA’s WebLGY System. The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued guidelines to address issues that have arisen since making changes to its web-based loan guaranty system, WebLGY, earlier this month in regards to condominium identification. System changes included removal of the fields where users would input condo IDs when ordering a VA loan identification number (LINs)/appraisal ...

Private mortgage insurers are winning purchase-mortgage business away from the FHA, and VA lending is also gaining ground, according to an analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities data by Inside Mortgage Trends. Lenders delivered $50.25 billion of purchase loans with private MI coverage into agency MBS during the third quarter of 2017. That represented 40.2 percent of total insured purchase loans securitized by the agencies, up from 39.3 percent ... [Includes one data chart]

Arch Capital Group is set to issue a mortgage-insurance linked note transaction. Unlike two other re-insurance deals from a similar shelf, Bellemeade Re 2017-1 received credit ratings, expanding the investor base for the transaction. A mezzanine tranche of the deal received preliminary BBB ratings from Morningstar Credit Rat-ings this week. Mortgages delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises with an unpaid principal balance of $29.30 billion are included in the transaction ...

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson indicated he is open to the idea of moving the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program out of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund to stem future losses. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee this week, Carson said the changes the department has made recently, as well as those currently under consideration, will eliminate most of the program’s problems although residual issues may still linger. Carson acknowledged that the HECM program’s default rate has been a drain on the MMI Fund even though it is much smaller than the FHA’s forward loan portfolio. The recently revised HECM rules issued on Sept. 19 have “stopped the bleeding” in terms of new reverse mortgages, he added. However, separating the HECM portfolio from the FHA insurance fund and making it a stand-alone program is ...

An estimated 9.8 percent of Ginnie Mae’s business may be potentially at risk due to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, according to data released recently by the agency. The data represent the number of Ginnie loans and their unpaid principal balance amounts in presidentially declared disaster areas in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A total of 1.07 million mortgage loans with an unpaid principal balance of $184.5 billion have been affected. Ginnie Mae’s current mortgage-backed securities portfolio totals $1.9 trillion. The data only refer to the geographic locations of all affected properties underlying loans in Ginnie MBS pools and do not indicate the percentage of those that may have sustained damage during a storm. Hurricane Irma had the highest share of affected loans, 6 percent, while Harvey and Maria accounted for 3 percent and 1 percent, respectively. Irma caused the ...

The FHA has updated its guidelines for Home Equity Conversion Mortgage for Purchase (H4P) loans to allow lenders to accept loan applications from borrowers without requiring a certificate of occupancy, as well as prior to completion of HECM counseling. The change follows the Sept. 19 effective date of the HECM final rule, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development released earlier this year. The final rule codifies the many policies that are now in place for originating and servicing reverse mortgages, including H4P requirements. According to the revised guideline, an FHA lender may take an initial HECM loan application either prior to or after the completion of HECM counseling. Also, previously, H4P properties were eligible for FHA insurance only when construction was completed and when the local jurisdiction issued a certificate of occupancy or its equivalent, confirming the ...