The Department of Veterans Affairs has clarified policies that have raised questions among VA lenders but were not addressed during the agency’s annual lender conference in San Diego, CA, back in May. ? What is the VA’s policy regarding a non-purchasing spouse’s (NPS) credit? VA: The NPS’s liabilities need to be considered but not its credit history. ? What is VA’s policy regarding a loss that an NPS reports on a joint tax return? If a joint tax return shows a business loss, then that loss will have to be deducted from the veteran’s income in both community and non-community property states. What is reported to the Internal Revenue Service must be used when applying for a federally guaranteed loan In a situation where a couple has been faced with business losses, the veteran and his or her spouse may want to consider both being on the loan in order to potentially qualify. ? The VA Pamphlet states: “Account balances reduced to ...

The Department of Veterans Affairs has spelled out steps for disputing and resolving audit findings with the agency. The VA Home Loan Guaranty program has a policy-resolution protocol in place to increase both consistency among the VA regional loan centers (RLC) and responsiveness to lender inquiries. In seeking to resolve an audit dispute with an RLC, the lender should first consult the VA Lender’s Handbook before contacting the VA. Lenders also are encouraged to check with colleagues who might be familiar with issues underlying the dispute. The lender should contact the RLC with jurisdiction for an official response to case-specific questions. When disputing an audit finding or a deficiency letter, the lender should contact the loan specialist who conducted the audit. If, after communicating with the loan specialist, the dispute remains unresolved, the lender should take its concern to ...

CA Legislature Poised to Pass Protections for Widowed Homeowners. The California legislature is a step away from enacting legislation that would extend existing foreclosure protections in the state Homeowners Bill of Rights (HBOR) to widows, widowers and other heirs of deceased homeowners. The legislature passed the HBOR in 2012 to provide due process protections to homeowners and establish rules and procedures for communication between servicers and borrowers regarding options to avoid foreclosure. However, the bill’s protections did not extend to surviving spouses and successors-in-interest who may wish to continue paying the mortgage loan but could not assume the loan or afford the payment with the loss of the deceased homeowner’s income. Surviving family members may then seek a loan assumption or modification, only to be refused by the servicer because their names are not on the ...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securitized $58.61 billion of single-family home loans that carried private mortgage insurance during the second quarter of 2016, a solid 33.0 percent increase over the first three months of the year, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside Mortgage Finance. The boost in private MI business was slightly stronger than the 26.2 percent increase in overall single-family mortgage-backed securities issuance for the two government-sponsored enterprises during the same period. Overall, the biggest increase in GSE business during the second quarter was...[Includes two data tables]

The Obama administration’s top housing official took a beating from Republicans on the House Financial Services Committee during a hearing this week over recent changes to the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Distressed Asset Sales Program, also known as DASP. For more than two hours, HUD Secretary Julian Castro faced a relentless attack by Republicans angered by what they perceived as preferential treatment given to nonprofits and local government over private investors in the DASP bidding process. The federal program sells pools of severely delinquent FHA mortgages to investors to help distressed borrowers stay in their homes and, at the same time, minimize losses to the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Most of the nonperforming loans in the DASP pools are...

Mortgage lenders delivered big increases in purchase mortgages and refinance loans to Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae during the second quarter of 2016, according to a new analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. The agencies securitized $100.05 billion of purchase mortgages and $118.24 billion of refinance loans during the second quarter, up 37.3 percent and 31.1 percent, respectively, from the first three months of the year. That brought total agency issuance of single-family MBS to $612.38 billion for the first six months of 2016, putting the market on target to match last year’s $1.261 trillion in production. Although second-quarter volume was a strong rebound from the first quarter, momentum seemed...[Includes two data tables]

Over the past year, mortgage lenders have been clamoring for pricing breaks from the government-sponsored enterprises as well as the FHA, but so far nothing has changed. But is the industry’s luck about to turn? A handful of GSE watchers interviewed by Inside Mortgage Finance believe there’s a greater likelihood of a cut in FHA premiums before the fall election as opposed to the Federal Housing Finance Agency doing something about loan-level price adjustments or guaranty fees. In general, it’s...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development last week announced stronger protections for homeowners and more favorable pricing for nonprofit participants in its Distressed Asset Stabilization Program but reactions from community and advocacy groups have been mixed. The program has been under fire because the bulk auctions of nonperforming mortgages have primarily benefited private equity firms and hedge funds, which bought the loans at a steep discount but did little to save homeowners from foreclosure or revitalize the communities where the properties backing the loans are located. HUD converted...

Ginnie Mae has good reason to be concerned about rapid demographic change in its relatively small issuer community. Nonbank institutions – many of them relatively newly formed and based on nontraditional business models – are taking over the market. Nonbank issuers accounted for a whopping 69.4 percent of Ginnie’s issuance of single-family mortgage-backed securities during the first quarter of 2016. A year ago, their share was 64.6 percent. Two years ago it was 46.7 percent. With those kinds of gains on the production line, it’s not hard to see why nonbanks are claiming a growing share of Ginnie servicing outstanding. At the end of March, nonbanks owned 46.7 percent of Ginnie single-family mortgage servicing rights, up a hefty 11.5 percentage points in one year. That rate of growth can’t be accomplished just by producing new MBS because the servicing market simply doesn’t grow that fast. (Although the Ginnie market has grown significantly faster than any other segment of ... [ 2 charts ]

Investors in FHA’s distressed note sales program would be required to do more for homeowners to help them avoid foreclosure and keep their homes, thanks to improvements to FHA’s Distressed Asset Stabilization Program (DASP) announced this week by the agency. The changes appear aimed at consumer groups’ criticism of the Department of Housing and Urban Development for allowing profit-oriented investors to purchase the troubled HUD assets at a discount and flip the homes for a profit without ever helping the distressed homeowner. Although the transactions make good economic sense for investors and the government, struggling homeowners end up losing their homes without having tried any loan modification option that could have helped them avoid foreclosure. HUD launched the DASP in 2010 under pressure from Congress to help stabilize the FHA’s Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, which ...