Expenses for maintaining foreclosed properties before their transfer or conveyance are much higher for FHA than for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report. The report, which focuses on the growing number of vacant properties and the costs and challenges of maintaining them, found that FHA’s pre-conveyance reimbursements to servicers are higher than the government-sponsored enterprises’ pre-foreclosure reimbursements. In 2010, the FHA reimbursed servicers about $1,982 compared to the GSEs’ $235 per property for maintenance-related expenses prior to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has proposed to create a new system that would facilitate the transfer and streamline the collection of records under the FHA’s lender approval and recertification process. The new, fully automated records system, the Lender Electronic Assessment Portal, will assume full custody and control of lender records currently maintained by the HUD/FHA Lender Approval Files System of Records Notice (SORN), which is a manual and labor-intensive process. The current system contains records of principals or officers of financial institutions who are approved or seeking approval to ...

Only state-certified appraisers can conduct appraisals of properties securing an FHA-insured mortgage under a final rule adopted recently by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. At the same time, the new rule made clear that FHA would no longer allow state-licensed appraisers to perform FHA appraisals. The FHA has not been accepting applications by state-licensed appraisers since Oct. 1, 2008, following the enactment of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act. Previous HUD regulations required that an appraiser be state-licensed or state-certified in order to be placed on the department’s official roster of appraisers. However, HERA mandated only ...

Ginnie Mae may have reported potentially inaccurate data to Congress about its exposures because estimates were not based on the best available data, according to a recent report by the Government Accountability Office. The agency’s sensitivity analysis also ignored important data, which could affect the accuracy of its cash-flow forecasts, the report said. Although Ginnie Mae has revised its cash-flow forecast model, it has not implemented practices identified in Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board guidance and risk-budgeting guidance, the report noted. By ignoring such practices, Ginnie Mae’s model may not be ...

Ginnie Mae recently announced changes to rules implementing provisions under the Servicemembers’ Civil Relief Act for reimbursing excess mortgage interest to Ginnie Mae issuers. Under the revised SCRA reimbursement policy, issuers will be reimbursed excess interest payments on SCRA mortgage loans based on two different dates for reservists and active members of the military, said Ginnie Mae officials during an issuer outreach webinar on Dec. 8. If the borrower is a reservist, the reimbursement will be based on the date of the receipt of the deployment letter and reimbursements for active members will be based on the deployment date. Under the SCRA, mortgage lenders are required to ...

Total FHA endorsements declined 4.2 percent in October from the previous month and 29.7 percent from a year ago even as FHA refinances continued to slow, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of FHA data. A total of 88,060 mortgages were endorsed for FHA insurance in October, down from 91,963 loans in September. Of the October endorsements, 60,596 were purchase loans, down 9.0 percent from the previous month and 7.9 percent from the same reporting period last year. FHA refinancing increased 15.4 percent on a month-to-month basis but declined a whopping 57.9 percent from last year. Streamlined FHA refis were ... (Comes with one chart)

A Senate panel this week endorsed President Obama’s nominees for open posts at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., although the nomination of Carol Galante as head of the FHA may likely be delayed on the Senate floor. While the vote on the nominations of Maurice Jones to become HUD deputy secretary and Thomas Hoenig to be vice chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. were unanimous, Galante ran into trouble with Republicans on the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. Galante’s nomination was approved on a...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development is weighing a number of options, including raising insurance premiums for the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund as political concerns grow that the program may need a taxpayer bailout. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee last week, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said he plans to include premium increases and other proposals in the department’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal to bring the FHA’s excess capital reserves back to the required level. Donovan said the FHA continues to evaluate policy options to...

The dust is starting to settle over an increasingly complex landscape of agency loan limits for 2012 that features 83 defined metro markets where the FHA can insure loans that are too big to be financed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The Department of Housing and Urban Development this week released guidance on FHA loan limits that changed twice in calendar 2011. On Oct. 1, a new set of FHA loan limits based on a $625,500 maximum went into effect, and they will apply to loans with FHA case numbers assigned between that date and Nov. 17, said...(Includes one data chart)

Bank of America and Wells Fargo continued their dominance of the FHA servicing market, accounting for 55.1 percent of the business as of Sept. 30. Of the 1,177,858 FHA-insured loans currently being serviced, 16.91 percent are in various stages of delinquency. Seriously delinquent loans – 90 days or more behind on their mortgage payments – comprised ... [includes one chart]