In an unusual move, a Washington, DC, think tank has publicly taken to task the official watchdog of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, finding a recent audit of the FHFA’s representation-and-warranty policy “incomplete.” The September report by the FHFA’s Inspector General concluded that the Finance Agency’s implementation of the rep-and-warrant framework was premature and resulted in “significant and unresolved operational risks” to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. An analysis by the Urban Institute found that the OIG’s conclusions were “incomplete and overstate the risk of the plan.”
IG Recommends FHFA Upgrade Its Recordkeeping. The Federal Housing Finance Agency is in compliance with its recordkeeping procedures but the policy and infrastructure of its records management could do with an upgrade, concluded an evaluation by FHFA’s Inspector General last week. The IG said that the Finance Agency’s Division of Enterprise Regulation’s recordkeeping practices “have limitations that impede the efficient retrieval” of examination workpapers by agency staff and by IG auditors.
New regulations in the mortgage industry have wreaked havoc on the business, with lenders facing higher compliance risk and growing compliance costs, according to Fannie Mae’s third quarter survey of mortgage lender sentiment. The results show that 72 percent of lenders reported that recent regulations, among them the qualified-mortgage rule and the risk-based capital rules for banks, have had a “significant” impact on their business. Only 22 percent reported “minimal” impact ...
Zandi and deRitis believe that the FHA is on track to be able to lower its mortgage insurance premiums by 50 basis points to an average of 120 basis points for total upfront and annual premiums.
Mortgage lenders continued to work through a huge pile of repurchase demands related to loans securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac before the housing market crash. The two government-sponsored enterprises reported a total of $1.269 billion of repurchases by sellers during the second quarter of 2014, according to a new analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter, of Securities and Exchange Commission filings by the two GSEs. That compared to just $522.5 million in repurchases during the first quarter of this year. As has been the case since the buyback issue mushroomed several years ago, most of the second-quarter repurchases focused...[Includes one data chart]
Thanks to rapidly improving delinquency rates and real estate values, the bloom appears to be off the rose for specialty servicers that built their business on processing delinquent and high-touch mortgages that are guaranteed by Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA. Over the past month, layoffs have plagued both Wingspan Portfolio Services, Dallas, and Residential Credit Solutions of Fort Worth, TX. Moreover, industry officials who work in the servicing sector believe...
Officially launched a year ago, the Bethesda, MD-based Common Securitization Solutions has no chief executive officer or chairman but continues to hire staff.
Specialty servicer Wingspan is expected to issue a press release this week, providing some clarity about a change of control at the company and the future of its founder...
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