FY 2013 Actuarial Review of Insurance Fund Out in Mid-December. The Department of Housing and Urban Development expects to issue the long-anticipated FHA FY 2013 independent review of the state of the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund during or before the middle of December. The report’s release was delayed due to the three-week government shutdown in October. The report will show FHA taking a mandatory appropriation of $1.7 billion to close out FY 2013. HUD has clarified that the draw is an accounting transfer required to close out the FHA’s FY 2013 books and not a reflection of ...

Nancy Handal, managing director of insurance conglomerate MetLife, oversees a $70 billion fixed-income portfolio and a $6 billion “high-yield” residential MBS opportunity fund – but has bought into just one jumbo MBS deal over the past few years. And she’s not shy about the reasons why: it’s all about disclosures. Handal is not happy about what non-agency issuers disclose and in particular she’s dismayed that MBS investors are essentially frozen out of the due-diligence process. Speaking at a housing forum sponsored by the Urban Institute and CoreLogic this week, the MetLife executive expressed...

The FHA is working to create a quality-assurance framework with enhanced reporting built around QA results as well as a refined approach to identifying underwriting defects, according to a top agency official. There is much uncertainty in the mortgage market today and one way to address that is to create a clear framework for lenders explaining FHA’s view of underwriting defects, how they are defined as well as their consequences, said Charles Coulter, deputy assistant secretary for housing with the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Speaking at the recent Mortgage Bankers Association annual convention, Coulter said the ...

The FHA’s effort to reduce its presence in the mortgage market to make room for private capital would be derailed if Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac raised their guaranty fees, warned an agency official. Responding to a question during the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention, Charles Coulter, deputy assistant secretary for single-family housing at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, said the FHA is currently “priced appropriately” and sees no need to further increase mortgage insurance premiums. The FHA has lost about 20 percent of its share of originations after five MIP increases in ...

Applying certain private mortgage insurance practices and requirements to FHA may not be as ideal as some proponents suggest because they do not fit in the business environment in which the FHA operates, according to a new study from the Government Accountability Office. Nonetheless, the regulatory framework for private mortgage insurers has features that could enhance the transparency of the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund and Congress’ oversight of FHA’s operations, the study concluded. The GAO did the study at the request of ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has made long-awaited increases for claimable attorney fees and extended the foreclosure timeframes in many jurisdictions to help mortgage servicers perform better. The agency sets limits on the attorney fees servicers can claim on an FHA foreclosure and prescribes the length of time for doing due diligence. The last time HUD updated its guidance on fees and “reasonable diligence timeframe” for prosecuting a foreclosure on an FHA-insured loan was in 2005. However, changes in state foreclosure requirements in recent years have made it difficult for FHA servicers to ...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development has updated the timelines and methods servicers must follow for communicating with borrowers in default. Mortgagee Letter 2013-39 also addresses policies for engaging borrowers early in their delinquencies, specialized collection techniques for early-payment defaults or re-default, and FHA’s expectation for servicers to have written processes and procedures to follow for every stage of delinquency up to collection. Communicating early with borrowers who are late in their mortgage payments is essential in ensuring that delinquency is properly addressed, the agency said. HUD’s latest guidance provides a “collection-communication timeline,” which is a series of sequential steps a servicer can follow in dealing with a delinquent borrower. These steps would help the servicer assess a borrower’s circumstances, intentions and financial condition as well as determine an appropriate response.

Ginnie Mae issuers reported a 14.0 percent drop in mortgage-backed securities issuances in the third quarter from the previous quarter as refinance activity declined further and home-purchase lending slowed during the period, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of Ginnie Mae data. Despite the quarter-over-quarter drop, Ginnie production rose 11.2 percent in the first nine months of 2013. Volume over this period totaled $313.8 million, of which 60.3 percent were FHA loans, 33.9 percent were VA, and 5.2 percent were rural housing loans. Ginnie MBS issuance dropped gradually ... [2 charts]

During the third quarter of 2013, for the first time since the middle of 2008, private mortgage insurers edged past the government-insurance programs to become the biggest source of primary MI coverage in the market, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. Private MIs provided primary coverage on $59.03 billion of newly originated mortgages during the third quarter. That was down 3.2 percent from the second quarter, but the FHA and VA programs posted even bigger declines of 17.5 percent and 10.6 percent, respectively. That gave the private MI sector a 39.4 percent share of new primary coverage, its highest level since the second quarter of 2008. The last time private MIs did...[Includes three data charts]

A trio of industry groups is calling upon the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to make sure there is adequate testing of the pending mortgage-origination disclosure forms expected to be released within the next few weeks. In a letter to CFPB Director Richard Cordray, the American Escrow Association, the American Financial Services Association and the Consumer Mortgage Coalition said they strongly support testing the forms before they are put into use. “There are a large number of mortgage loan products in the marketplace, and the rounds of forms the CFPB has released and tested do not accommodate all of them,” the groups said. The forms that have been released so far won’t work...