A California operator of an allegedly bogus foreclosure rescue firm has agreed to a $5 million settlement with the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Based on an investigation by HUD’s Office of the Inspector General, the DOJ filed a civil complaint against Terrill Meisinger, focusing on more than 100 properties that were financed through FHA and conventional loans. The complaint alleged that Meisinger contacted individuals facing foreclosure and offered ...

New temporary guidelines for approving FHA financing for condominium projects should boost sales of condo units across the country and improve current housing market conditions, according to industry stakeholders. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced the guideline changes on Sept. 13 after extensive consultations with industry participants. Effective for all condo project approvals and recertifications, the revised guidelines will apply until Aug. 31, 2014, unless extended by the FHA. Stakeholders are confident that the changes, though temporary, will be ...

CitiMortgage this week paid in excess of $122.8 million to the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund as part of its agreement with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Department of Justice to settle alleged violations of the False Claims Act. The payment to the FHA insurance fund is part of the $158.3 million settlement, which CitiMortgage agreed to in order to resolve charges of submitting false certifications to HUD regarding its compliance with FHA’s direct endorsement lender rules and endorsement of poorly underwritten loans for FHA insurance. These violations allegedly occurred between ...

The FHA’s seriously delinquent rates and early payment defaults went virtually unchanged in the second quarter of 2012 from the previous quarter, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s latest report on single-family programs covered by the FHA insurance fund. FHA data showed that the seriously delinquent rate for insured single-family mortgages (excluding streamline refinances) held at last quarter’s level of 9.4 percent, which is 1.4 percent higher than this period a year ago. The report attributed the elevated level to two factors. The first is the persistency of loans in 90-day delinquency as lenders try ...

The antiquated backbone of the FHA’s Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program will soon be history with the official launch of HERMIT on Oct. 9. HERMIT, or the Home Equity Reverse Mortgage Information Technology, is a second generation, web-based automated system, designed to improve the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s ability to track and monitor its HECM portfolio in real time. The system also automates the payments of insurance claims while increasing efficiency and mitigating risks to the FHA insurance fund. HERMIT consists of a servicing module and an accounting module to ...

Fixed-rate mortgages comprised most of August’s FHA production, which totaled $22.1 billion, up 13.2 percent from July and 37.9 percent from a year ago, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of FHA data. FRMs accounted for 98.9 percent of new loans with FHA insurance in August. In-house originations made up 79.6 percent of new endorsements while purchase loans accounted for 56.1 percent of FHA originations during the month. Wells Fargo is the only top FHA lender to exceed the billion-dollar mark. In fact, the bank reported $2.2 billion in new FHA originations, 76.0 percent of which were produced in-house. The purchase mortgage share of Well’s total FHA originations was ... [2 charts]

The FHA Short Sale program may have cost the Department of Housing and Urban Development more than $1 billion in ineligible claims but only a portion may actually be recovered, according to a report from HUD’s Office of the Inspector General. A HUD OIG audit estimated that the department paid $1.06 billion in claims for 11,693 preforeclosure sales that did not meet FHA’s criteria for participation in the program. The OIG said it began a nationwide review of the short sale program after finding significant deficiencies in borrower qualifications during an audit of CitiMortgage’s preforeclosure sale claims last year. Auditors found ...

Home-purchase mortgage activity, which dropped to a 15-year low in 2011, may be finally showing some signs of life in 2012. Thanks to very low mortgage rates and increased consumer confidence in home prices, a growing number of homebuyers – particularly current homeowners – are now taking out mortgages. In fact, the use of conventional conforming mortgage financing among homebuyers climbed to a two and a half year high in August, according to numbers released this week by the Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. “Conventional mortgages are...

The single-family mortgage market continued to shrink during the first half of 2012, registering the 13th consecutive quarterly decline in mortgage debt outstanding since early 2008. The Federal Reserve reported late last week that there were $10.028 trillion of single-family mortgages outstanding at the end of June. That was down 0.5 percent from the previous quarter and represented a cumulative 10.3 percent drop since March 2008. The supply of home mortgage debt fell to its lowest level since the midway point in 2006. There are two growth sectors, however. The supply of Ginnie Mae single-family servicing surged...[Includes one data chart]

House Financial Services Committee member John Campbell, R-CA, last week introduced H.R. 6397, the Defending American Taxpayers From Abusive Government Takings Act, legislation that would prohibit the origination of taxpayer-guaranteed mortgages in jurisdictions of the country where the power of eminent domain would be used to seize mortgages. If Campbell’s legislation is enacted – which is unlikely in the few days remaining in the legislative calendar of the 112th Congress, but probably will be resurrected in the 113th – it could prove fatal to a controversial eminent domain mortgage seizure plan proposed in recent months by Mortgage Resolution Partners. MRP’s plan would involve...