President Obama’s scant mention of housing finance reform or mortgage policy during this week’s State of the Union address was not entirely a surprise, say industry observers, but an administration official’s remarks last week on the Home Affordable Refinance Program’s outlook were more encouraging. Obama spoke of housing exactly twice during his prime time speech: first to describe the housing market as “rebounding” and again to demand from Congress “legislation that protects the taxpayers from footing the bill for a housing crisis ever again.” Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac were mentioned...

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will accept electronic signatures on FHA loan documents provided the lender complies with the department’s latest e-sign guidelines. E-signatures are voluntary under current HUD rules. Effective immediately, however, HUD will accept such signatures on FHA paperwork relating to mortgage insurance, servicing and loss mitigation, FHA insurance claims, HUD real estate-owned sales contracts and related addenda as long as they meet the new requirements. The new policy applies to all FHA forward mortgages and Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loans. HUD will treat eligible e-signatures as ...

California lenders and realtors will appeal to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to reconsider changes in the FHA 2014 loan limits. Lenders doing business in counties that have been hard hit by the loan-limit changes are reportedly gathering data to support future requests to HUD to recalculate loan limits for a specific local area. An industry source said lenders in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario housing market are gearing up to petition HUD to recalculate the FHA loan limits in those areas. Specifically, the median sales price for a one-unit property in the affected areas fell ...

The Senate this week passed bipartisan legislation that would delay unforeseen, excessive flood-insurance premium hikes for FHA and conventional mortgages nationwide. S. 1926, the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, passed by a vote of 67 to 32, as amended. Introduced by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Johnny Isakson, R-GA, the bill would delay rate increases for up to four years by giving the Federal Emergency Management Agency time to study the problem and develop a plan to help homeowners who cannot afford higher premiums. The increases were mandated by the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act, which Congress ...

VA Lenders’ Compliance with CFPB’s Ability-to-Repay and Qualified Mortgage Rules. Until the Department of Veterans Affairs’ rule on ATR/QM is in place, all VA lenders must comply with the requirements of the Truth in Lending Act, as established by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ATR/QM rule, according to a recent agency guideline. VA will continue to guarantee all loans made in compliance with existing VA requirements, regardless of their QM status, the agency clarified. It urged lenders to refer to the CFPB guidance to ensure all their VA loans are ...

Concerns about the potential harmful effects that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s qualified-mortgage standard might have in the manufactured housing sector struck like lighting at a hearing of the House Financial Services Committee this week, with CFPB Director Richard Cordray bristling at a perceived personal attack from a GOP member and demanding he be treated with respect. Storm clouds quickly gathered as Rep. Steve Pearce, R-NM, complained that the bureau’s QM rules and restrictions on high-cost loans would pretty much exclude manufactured housing – and then accused Cordray of deliberately trying to squash lower-income families. “Fifty percent of the homes in New Mexico are...

The Senate was scheduled to vote late this week on legislation that would delay excessive increases in flood-insurance premiums that are set to take effect as a result of the Biggert-Waters Flood Insurance Reform Act of 2012. Earlier this week, the Senate voted 86 to 13 to move forward with debate on the Homeowner Insurance Affordability Act (S. 1926), a bipartisan bill that was introduced in the Senate and in the House of Representatives to fix some of the ill effects of the Biggert-Waters Act. The vote stopped a filibuster seeking more subsidy cuts to the program. Sponsored by Sens. Robert Menendez, D-NJ, and Johnny Iskason, R-GA, the bill would delay...

Three House Democrats have added their own proposal to the growing list of legislative housing finance reforms that, in time, could pave the way for the government to sell off Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while giving new purpose to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. The reform proposal by Reps. John Delaney (MD), John Carney (DE) and Jim Himes (CT) would establish a system of government reinsurance for eligible mortgage-backed securities. The idea is to leverage the government’s capacity and the market’s ability to price risk, they said.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac should revise their seller/servicer guidelines to allow use of credit scores from more than one provider in order to “foster competition,” according to a bipartisan quartet of House Financial Services Committee members. In a letter sent to Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Mel Watt, Reps. Ed Royce, R-CA; Spencer Bachus, R-AL; James Himes, D-CT; and Carolyn Maloney, D-NY, said that the GSEs should not be restricted to relying on credit scores provided solely by the Fair Isaac Corp.

Michael Stegman, counselor to the Treasury Department on housing-finance policy, said this week that legislation to reform the government-sponsored enterprises is a top priority for the Obama administration. However, industry analysts suggest that Congress is unlikely to pass such legislation anytime soon, leaving the Federal Housing Finance Agency as the driver of GSE reform. “Indefinitely continuing a taxpayer-backed duopoly is neither sustainable nor sensible public policy,” Stegman said this week at the ABS Vegas conference sponsored by the Structured Finance Industry Group and Information Management Network. He pushed...