Weeks after the Trump administration banned the practice, the Senate Judiciary Committee is looking into whether the Obama administration used mortgage-related settlement funds to funnel money to political organizations that Congress deliberately defunded. In a recent letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-IA, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, revived a standing request to the Department of Justice for a list of all settlement agreements reached during the previous administration that involved alleged payments to partisan community organizations. He gave the agency until June 28 to respond to his request. Specifically, Grassley asked...

The Trump administration wants to pare back regulations that inhibit the non-agency MBS and ABS market and tilt current securitization economics that favor the government-sponsored enterprises over private issuers. “In order to revitalize a responsible [private-label securities] market, it is important to improve incentives for issuers through reasonable reductions in costs and regulatory burdens,” the Treasury Department said in a new report released this week. In particular, it aimed at adjusting relative economics for the government-sponsored enterprises and FHA/VA mortgage programs. On the regulatory side, Treasury recommends...

First-time homebuyers have fueled a surge in home sales in the last two years, and the trend is continuing into 2017, according to a new report on the first-time homebuyer market from Genworth Mortgage Insurance. The report focused on mortgage origination data from more than 20 million first-time homebuyers over the past 24 years, with some interesting findings. Approximately 85 percent of the overall increase in home sales over the past two years was...

The Treasury Department this week proposed eliminating the special qualified-mortgage provision that allows Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to acquire loans with debt-to-income ratios that exceed the normal 43 percent limit for QM loans. The special treatment for the government-sponsored enterprises, known as the GSE patch, “creates an unfair advantage for government-supported mortgages without providing additional consumer protection … and inhibits consumer choices by restricting private sector flexibility and participation,” the agency said in a report on financial service regulatory reform. The report urged...

The eligibility of surviving spouses of deceased veterans is something that surfaces every once a while in discussions about VA lending. According to Maxine Henry, program analyst with the VA Home Loan Guaranty Service in Washington, DC, the term “veteran” includes the surviving spouse of any veteran who died in active military service or from a service-connected disability. However, in July 2012, Congress passed H.R. 1627, Honoring America’s Veterans and Caring for Camp Lejeune Families Act, expanding the category of spouses who would be eligible for VA home loan benefits. President Obama signed the bill into law in August of that year. Prior to the bill’s enactment, only surviving spouses of veterans who died in service or of service-connected causes were considered for a VA mortgage. The statute extended VA home loan benefits to others, including widows who have not remarried and ...

A military veteran’s disability pension, a key underwriting factor for a VA loan, either can be service-connected or non-service-connected. A non-service-connected pension is for vets whose disability is unrelated to his time in the military. “It is permanent and total in nature and may not have been caused by their service to the military,” said Mark Jamison, loan production officer (LPO) with the VA’s Cleveland Regional Loan Center. A service-connected pension is for vets whose disability was a result of their military service, Jamison noted. If a vet is eligible for both a service-connected disability from VA and a non-service connected pension, he or she gets only the greater of the two amounts. Those eligible for a non-service connected pension include vets who were discharged from service for reasons other than dishonorable, and who served at least 90 days of active military service, one day of ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs is seeking clearance for two information-collection forms that are crucial to a veteran’s ability to obtain or cure a VA-guaranteed mortgage loan. The Office of Management and Budget is currently reviewing the forms. The VA also has published notices in the June 1 Federal Register seeking public comment on the proposed revised forms. Comments for both notices are due July 3, 2017. The first form relates to information a veteran must provide to be exempted from paying a funding fee. Borrowers are required to pay a funding fee to obtain a loan with a VA guaranty, unless the borrower is a disabled veteran receiving VA compensation for his or her service-connected disability. Loans made to unmarried surviving spouses of veterans who have died in service or from a service-related disability also are exempted from payment of the funding fee (regardless of whether the ...

Product valuations are not the most appealing to agency MBS investors right now – not enough to keep them from buying, perhaps, but enough to dry up whatever enthusiasm they might have, according to a new structured finance report from analysts at Wells Fargo Securities. “The core theme in the financial markets right now seems to be ‘reluctant buying,’” the report said. Most of the spread products at this point are trading at multiyear tights. And the bloom may be off the rose when it comes to the so-called Trump trade. “Some of the optimism around fiscal policy post-election that drove risk-premiums tighter is...

Sharp declines in retail originations of jumbo mortgages at a number of major lenders contributed to a decline in the channel’s share of jumbo originations in the first quarter of 2017, according to a new analysis by Inside Nonconforming Markets. The retail channel accounted for 79.3 percent of the $49.49 billion of jumbo originations reported by a diverse group of top lenders in the first quarter, down from an 82.6 percent share in the fourth quarter of 2016. Actual jumbo retail production reported by the group was...[Includes one data table]

Any Trump administration effort to reduce the role of FHA in the mortgage market should avoid any changes that might disrupt or damage the overall economy, said the Mortgage Bankers Association.Proposed changes to FHA intended to increase the role of private capital should strive to find the right balance between competing interests, said MBA President/CEO Dave Stevens. Unilateral action could prove to be detrimental to housing and the economy, he cautioned. President Trump campaigned, among other things, on a promise to reduce the role of government in a variety of areas, including the mortgage market. He has issued an executive order to freeze all new and pending regulations and review existing ones to determine which ones to eliminate, retain or revise. The Department of Housing and Urban Development recently published a notice in the ...