CoreLogic to Provide Solutions to Cut FHA, MMIF Losses. The Department of Housing and Urban Development has chosen CoreLogic to provide valuation and workflow solutions to mitigate losses to the FHA and the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Under an agreement with HUD, CoreLogic will provide support to determine the best strategies and plans for the valuation and disposition of distressed and real estate-owned properties in HUD’s inventory. Individual Condominium Loan Processing in the VA’s WebLGY System. The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued guidelines to address issues that have arisen since making changes to its web-based loan guaranty system, WebLGY, earlier this month in regards to condominium identification. System changes included removal of the fields where users would input condo IDs when ordering a VA loan identification number (LINs)/appraisal ...

Officials from the Department of Housing and Urban Development and Fannie Mae made lender-friendly announcements this week at the Mortgage Bankers Association’s annual convention, while Melvin Watt, director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, focused on some issues that he acknowledged might not be popular with lenders. HUD Secretary Ben Carson said the department is working to make lenders more comfortable originating FHA mortgages. “We have heard ...

Brian Montgomery, President Trump’s nominee for FHA commissioner, expressed concern that federal housing regulators may have been adversarial in their treatment of mortgage lenders in their effort to stem losses and protect the FHA insurance fund. Testifying during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs this week, Montgomery said regulators must do better providing clarity to lenders. “It’s time we treat [lenders] more like ...

Private mortgage insurers are winning purchase-mortgage business away from the FHA, and VA lending is also gaining ground, according to an analysis of agency mortgage-backed securities data by Inside Mortgage Trends. Lenders delivered $50.25 billion of purchase loans with private MI coverage into agency MBS during the third quarter of 2017. That represented 40.2 percent of total insured purchase loans securitized by the agencies, up from 39.3 percent ... [Includes one data chart]

The universe of servicing single-family home loans for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae continued to expand in the third quarter, but a handful of large banks wanted little to do with it. The three agencies had a combined $6.378 trillion of single-family mortgage-backed securities outstanding at the end of September, up 1.9 percent from the midway point in the year, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of agency MBS disclosures. All three ... [Includes two data charts]

Ginnie Mae issuers rode a wave of purchase-mortgage lending to deliver $120.46 billion of forward mortgages during the third quarter of 2017, the highest three-month volume for the year, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside FHA/VA Lending. Third-quarter volume was up 9.6 percent from the April-June cycle. The data excluded FHA reverse mortgages and loan amounts are truncated in Ginnie’s mortgage-backed securities disclosures. Without those limitations, total Ginnie MBS issuance rose 9.5 percent to $123.37 billion in the third quarter. Purchase mortgages were the engine behind the growth. Ginnie issuers securitized $85.35 billion of purchase loans in the third quarter, falling just short of the record $85.41 billion set in the third quarter of last year. Although most Ginnie purchase loans (58.7 percent) were FHA loans, the biggest increase was in such loans guaranteed by the ... [Charts]

Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson indicated he is open to the idea of moving the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program out of the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund to stem future losses. Testifying before the House Financial Services Committee this week, Carson said the changes the department has made recently, as well as those currently under consideration, will eliminate most of the program’s problems although residual issues may still linger. Carson acknowledged that the HECM program’s default rate has been a drain on the MMI Fund even though it is much smaller than the FHA’s forward loan portfolio. The recently revised HECM rules issued on Sept. 19 have “stopped the bleeding” in terms of new reverse mortgages, he added. However, separating the HECM portfolio from the FHA insurance fund and making it a stand-alone program is ...

Ginnie Mae and the VA this week officially announced a joint-agency task force to deal with the loan-churning problem that is triggering faster prepayments in Ginnie mortgage-backed securities pools. Specifically, the task force will scrutinize aggressive and misleading refinancing offers and address loan churning and repeated refinancings. It will also examine critical issues, data and lender behaviors related to refinancing loans, as well as determine the kind of policy and program changes agencies should make to ensure VA refi loans do not pose an undue risk or burden to vets and taxpayers. Both the VA and Ginnie Mae programs work best when market participants use them to provide a benefit to VA borrowers and, ultimately, lower vet’s costs, officials said. The task force has begun examining data and information to ensure refi loans provide net tangible benefits to veteran-borrowers. In addition, the ...

An estimated 9.8 percent of Ginnie Mae’s business may be potentially at risk due to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, according to data released recently by the agency. The data represent the number of Ginnie loans and their unpaid principal balance amounts in presidentially declared disaster areas in Texas, Florida, Georgia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. A total of 1.07 million mortgage loans with an unpaid principal balance of $184.5 billion have been affected. Ginnie Mae’s current mortgage-backed securities portfolio totals $1.9 trillion. The data only refer to the geographic locations of all affected properties underlying loans in Ginnie MBS pools and do not indicate the percentage of those that may have sustained damage during a storm. Hurricane Irma had the highest share of affected loans, 6 percent, while Harvey and Maria accounted for 3 percent and 1 percent, respectively. Irma caused the ...

The FHA has updated its guidelines for Home Equity Conversion Mortgage for Purchase (H4P) loans to allow lenders to accept loan applications from borrowers without requiring a certificate of occupancy, as well as prior to completion of HECM counseling. The change follows the Sept. 19 effective date of the HECM final rule, which the Department of Housing and Urban Development released earlier this year. The final rule codifies the many policies that are now in place for originating and servicing reverse mortgages, including H4P requirements. According to the revised guideline, an FHA lender may take an initial HECM loan application either prior to or after the completion of HECM counseling. Also, previously, H4P properties were eligible for FHA insurance only when construction was completed and when the local jurisdiction issued a certificate of occupancy or its equivalent, confirming the ...