A group of servicers and other industry participants is focusing on issues with government-insured mortgages and has plans to simplify servicing practices. The Mortgage Servicing Collaborative was organized by the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center. It includes representatives from a number of major servicers along with some officials from trade groups, consumer groups, investors, mortgage insurers, vendors and academics. The goal is...

The U.S. House of Representatives was a relatively busy place last week, with a handful of measures related to flood insurance passing the House Financial Services Committee, and a few other, small-scale, individual mortgage reforms being introduced. Among the bills passed by the committee was H.R. 2875, the “National Flood Insurance Program Administrative Reform Act of 2017,” introduced by Rep. Nydia Velazquez, D-NY. It would make certain administrative reforms to the NFIP to increase fairness and accuracy and to protect the taxpayer from program fraud and abuse. The legislation passed on a 58-0 vote. Also favorably voted on was...

Wells Fargo fell a notch as PennyMac raced to the top to become the leading VA jumbo securitizer for the first quarter of 2017 – a period in which VA jumbo loan securitization took a sharp nose dive. The volume of VA jumbo loans securitized during the first three months plunged 36.8 percent, compared to the meager 2.0 percent decline seen in the fourth quarter. The drop reflected a 32.9 percent drop in jumbo mortgage production during the first quarter, along with similar large drops in virtually every product segment in the mortgage market, according to an analysis by Inside FHA/VA Lending affiliate Inside Mortgage Finance. The agency jumbo market was down 39.1 percent from the fourth quarter despite the bump up in high-cost loan limits to $636,150, an increase of $10,650 that became effective in January. All components of the agency jumbo market took big hits in the first quarter, including ... [ Charts ]

The Mortgage Bankers Association is calling for a moratorium on future claims against FHA lenders under the False Claims Act to give the Department of Housing and Urban Development sufficient time to streamline its defect taxonomy and revise its loan-level certification requirements. In letters to HUD and the Department of Justice, the MBA said the FHA has yet to issue clear standards identifying specific errors that could trigger an FCA claim and those that do not. FCA enforcement actions can result in very significant damage to a lender’s reputation and bottom line, warned Dave Stevens, MBA president and chief executive officer. Although FHA lenders work hard to ensure compliance with strict underwriting and documentation standards, origination, insurance and servicing depend heavily on human efforts, which could easily result in technical errors, he added. While lenders process ...

The FHA has issued guidance to lenders and appraisers regarding problems that have arisen since the agency announced its Electronic Appraisal Delivery (EAD) portal in 2015. Effective June 27, FHA will require appraisals for new FHA originations to be submitted through the EAD. The portal’s use has been voluntary. Users without a valid user ID for accessing the EAD portal will be locked out of the system after the effective date, the FHA warned. Users that have not signed on the FHA Connection will lose their user ID. Only their organization’s FHAC application coordinator can reinstate them and restore access to the portal. “Hard stop” messages, which are built into the EAD portal, indicate data errors that must be resolved before the appraisal can be successfully transmitted to FHA. This helps avoid potential data conflicts between the portal and FHA. The FHA has identified five hard-stop errors ...

VA troubleshooters have identified the technical glitch that has prevented servicers from uploading current servicing data to the agency’s VALERI system. According to a VA spokesperson, the problem was caused by faulty uploading procedures, not by malware within the documents as earlier feared. “Dridex was originally suspected because we became aware of it at the same time the uploading problem occurred,” he explained. “Our warning to servicers was an emphasis on the side of caution.” The Dridex malware, which can go undetected, targets customers of financial institutions by stealing their personal information through HTML injections. The VA Loan Electronic Reporting Interface (VALERI) is a loan administration system that servicers use to oversee loan servicing, monitor loan defaults, and accept and pay claims and incentives. Servicers experiencing problems with uploading servicing data should immediately ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development could soon face a technology crisis with roughly 87 percent of its antiquated information-technology systems dying or on the verge of collapse. The warning came from the HUD inspector general in a semiannual report to Congress. The report raised concerns about the poor state of HUD’s IT systems, “of which 87 percent are at or near the end of their life cycle.” These systems include 400 IT products that no longer have technical support, the report noted. The problem is so bad that HUD is having trouble doing mathematical ...

House Financial Services Committee Approves Flood Insurance Reform Measures.The House Financial Services Committee this week reported out several bills to reform and reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program, which is set to expire on Sept. 20, 2017. The bills that passed included H.R. 2875, the National Flood Insurance Program Administrative Reform Act of 2017, which would protect taxpayers from program fraud and abuse; H.R. 1588, the Repeatedly Flooded Communities Preparation Act, which would ensure community accountability for areas frequently damaged by floods; and H.R. 1422, the Flood Insurance Market parity and Modernization Act, which would increase the availability of private flood insurance. The committee also approved H.R. 2246, the Taxpayer Exposure Mitigation Act of 2017, which would shift flood insurance risk for commercial and multifamily properties in ...

First-time homebuyers have fueled a surge in home sales in the last two years, and the trend is continuing into 2017, according to a new report on the first-time homebuyer market from Genworth Mortgage Insurance. The report focused on mortgage origination data from more than 20 million first-time homebuyers over the past 24 years, with some interesting findings. Approximately 85 percent of the overall increase in home sales over the past two years was...

Federal banking regulators this week took action against two mortgage lenders for failing to enforce flood insurance requirements on properties in flood-prone areas. Separately, House lawmakers mulled over draft Republican legislation to reform and reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced it slapped Colonial Savings Bank with an $87,500 penalty for violation of the Federal Disaster Protection Act of 1973. The FDPA requires...