The Mortgage Bankers Association is urging Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson to rescind current guidance and prohibit future FHA financing of properties encumbered by a Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) tax lien. The guidance, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development implemented in July last year, should be eliminated unless the PACE lien is clearly subordinated to the FHA loan and national, standardized consumer protections are in place, the MBA said. The MBA said it has significant concerns with the risk posed by PACE financing to traditional lien priority and the FHA, as well as the lack of consumer protections. “Unfortunately, [current PACE guidance] does not reduce these concerns – it amplifies them,” the letter warned. PACE loans were developed to help finance energy-efficient retrofits, such as solar panels, energy-saving appliances and ...

The FHA will implement its new Loan Review System that features a defect taxonomy on May 15, 2017. The new system is designed to reduce potential lender liability when FHA loans go into default. The LRS will be used to manage FHA single-family loan and monitoring reviews as well as lender self-reporting of fraud, misrepresentation and other material findings. A change in the pre-endorsement loan review period from pre-closing to post-closing will also become effective on May 15. Scrutinizing loans after they close prior to endorsement for FHA insurance would ensure that loans have no material defects or material errors that could expose the lender to enforcement action or false-claim litigation and the likelihood of a hefty settlement. The defect taxonomy will help lenders identify and classify loan-level defects uncovered through individual loan reviews. Material loan defects have been narrowed down to ...

The FHA’s mortgage insurance premium freeze will have the hardest impact in markets with high shares of FHA-insured mortgage loans, according to a new analysis by the National Association of Realtors. The top 10 markets in which FHA dominates are in Texas and California along with wide swaths of the Southeast and Rust Belt states. FHA comprises more than 40 percent of home-purchase mortgages originated in the aforementioned markets, which would benefit significantly from the 25 percent MIP reduction announced by former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro on Jan. 9 this year. Shortly after taking office, the new Trump administration froze a number of new policies issued during the waning days of the Obama administration, including the 25 bps MIP reduction. During his Senate confirmation hearing, HUD Secretary Ben Carson said he would set aside the ...

Correction: There was an error in the total number reported for Home Equity Conversion Mortgage originations in 2015 in the March 17, 2017, issue of Inside FHA/VA Lending. The correct total is $16.0 billion. HUD Secretary Ben Carson Visits Dallas/Ft. Worth. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson continued his national listening tour this week in Dallas/Ft. Worth to learn more about HUD’s public housing programs. Carson embarked on a national listening tour March 15 at a Detroit high school bearing his name President Trump recently released his proposed preliminary FY 2018 budget, which showed among other things a drastic $6.2 billion reduction in funding for public housing assistance and affordable housing. Carson said the discretionary budget plan promotes fiscal responsibility at HUD by “promoting better efficiencies and ...

Over the past six quarters, selling Ginnie Mae servicing rights has been a difficult task with buyers turning their noses up at the product, preferring instead to stay within the safe confines of deals tied to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac loans. According to investment bankers interviewed by Inside Mortgage Finance, the Ginnie market for mortgage servicing rights has been problematic for two main reasons: the fear of lawsuits and sanctions tied to FHA lending, and fast prepayment speeds tied to FHA and VA streamline refis. But now that rates have risen – and mostly stayed that way – there are...

The government-sponsored enterprises and their regulator, the Federal Housing Finance Agency, have done a lot to improve borrower access to credit, and now it is FHA’s turn to do the same, according to a new analysis by the Urban Institute. Laurie Goodman, co-director of the Housing Finance Policy Center at the Urban Institute, noted that Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHFA have been more successful than the FHA in reassuring lenders that they would be held liable only for underwriting errors and not for whether the borrower defaults on the loan. The GSEs and the FHFA have removed...

The Department of Veterans Affairs is considering possible solutions, including new regulation or policy changes, to address the ongoing problem of aggressive refinancing of VA purchase loans. Certain lenders and mortgage brokers apparently are still soliciting VA purchase loans for streamline refinancing despite Ginnie Mae’s effort to stop the practice and help mortgage-securities investors get full return on their investments. Ginnie Mae issued...

Congress should pass legislation setting uniform standards for qualified mortgages, according to the U.S. Mortgage Insurers trade group. USMI raised particular concerns about differences in the points-and-fees calculation for FHA mortgages compared with the standard for mortgages delivered to the government-sponsored enterprises. As required by the Dodd-Frank Act, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau established standards for QMs. Certain federal regulators, including the Department of Housing and Urban Development, were allowed to implement QM standards that differed from the CFPB standards. USMI noted...

Correspondent mortgage originators account for an unusually large share of FHA and VA lending, but the channel lost some market share in 2016, according to a new analysis by Inside FHA/VA Lending. Correspondent production accounted for 53.2 percent of the $275.14 billion of government-insured mortgages originated by a diverse group of lenders that included the top players in the market. That was a significantly bigger correspondent share than was seen in the conventional-conforming market (42.6 percent) or the jumbo space (16.2 percent). However, the 2016 figure was down from a 57.8 percent correspondent share of FHA/VA lending back in 2015, the first year for which data are available. Correspondent originations of government-insured lending by the group were up 31.1 percent from 2015, but their total FHA/VA lending jumped 42.3 percent. The retail share rose ... [ 1 chart ]

Production of Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans was down in 2016 with an estimated $14.9 billion originated last year, compared to $16.0 billion the previous year. Year-over-year, total HECM volume fell 6.4 percent. Purchase loans accounted for 85.9 percent of FHA-insured reverse mortgages produced over the 12-month period. Originations, however, rose by 8.0 percent in the fourth quarter from the previous quarter due to a spike in HECM lending in December. Purchase HECMs with an adjustable rate appeared to be the product of choice among HECM borrowers in 2016. American Advisors Group continued to dominate the market, closing 2016 with $2.1 billion in HECM originations for a 14.0 percent market share. One Reverse Mortgage was the second top HECM producer of the year with $855 million, while Reverse Mortgage Funding was in third place with $649.8 million. Liberty Home Equity Solutions hung on ... [ 1 chart ]