VA Announces Special Relief Following Hurricane Lane. The Department of Veterans Affairs has issued guidance reminding servicers of measures they may use to provide relief to VA borrowers affected by Hurricane Lane. VA Announces Modification Comparison Chart; Development Updates. To provide additional clarification, VA has created a chart summarizing its different modification options. The chart will be available to servicers at https://www.benefits.va.gov/ HOMELOANS/servicers_valeri_guides.asp on Monday, Sept. 10, 2018. Also, VALERI Manifest 18.3 will be released on Sept. 8. VALERI will be unavailable from 7 p.m. EST to 11 p.m. EST. The following system enhancements will be included: CQ 13433 – Updates the redemption expiration date business rule logic in the Transfer of Custody event to pass if loan is terminated via deed in lieu; and CQ 13535 – Updates the ...
Big Four accounting firm Deloitte has paid $149.5 million to the federal government to settle allegations of misconduct in connection with its role as the independent outside auditor of defunct FHA lender Taylor, Bean & Whitaker. The settlement amount includes $115 million in restitution paid to the Department of Housing and Urban Development on Aug. 13, 2018, according to the HUD inspector general. The rest of the payment went to the Department of Justice, which brought the charges on behalf of the government. Deloitte admitted neither to any liability nor to wrongdoing. TBW was an FHA direct endorsement lender and a Ginnie Mae-approved mortgage-backed securities issuer and servicer. It originated, underwrote, acquired and sold mortgages to Freddie Mac and other investors, which used the loans to support MBS issuance or held them as investments. In its heyday, TBW was one of the ...
House Financial Services Committee Chairman Jeb Hensarling, R-TX, unveiled long-awaited legislation on government-sponsored enterprise reform that would enhance Ginnie Mae’s role in the secondary mortgage market. Hensarling referred to the bill – the Bipartisan Housing Reform Act of 2018 – as a “bipartisan compromise housing-reform plan” that preserves the government guarantee in the secondary mortgage market. The chairman collaborated with Rep. John Delaney, D-MD, in crafting the bill, which calls for the repeal of the federal charters of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The bill would shift the secondary market to a system that allows pooling of qualified conventional mortgages backed by government-approved private guarantors with regulated capital. These loans could be pooled in mortgage-backed securities with explicit government guarantees provided by Ginnie. The new MBS program would be ...
Ginnie Mae issuers produced $36.68 billion of new single-family mortgage-backed securities last month, a modest 5.0 percent gain from July, according to a new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis and ranking. Through the first eight months of the year, Ginnie issuance was down 11.0 percent from the same period in 2017. The MBS figures do not include FHA home-equity conversion mortgages, and loan amounts are truncated to the lowest $1,000. Purchase mortgages accounted for 75.6 percent of new issuance in August, although volume was up just 1.9 percent from July’s level. On a year-to-date basis, the purchase-mortgage share rose from 65.7 percent in 2017 to 70.0 percent for the first eight months of this year. Total volume, however, was down 5.1 percent. The refinance market has been more wobbly. As of the end of August, refi volume totaled $65.87 billion, down 26.2 percent from the ... [Chart]
The Securities and Exchange Commission levied $16.3 million in penalties against Moody’s Investors Service last week to settle charges involving internal control failures and failures to clearly define and consistently apply credit rating symbols. The bulk of the fine relates to more than 650 non-agency mortgage-backed security ratings issued between 2010 and 2013 that subsequently had to be corrected. Sens. Mark Warner, D-VA, and Mike Rounds ... [Includes four briefs]
Rating services are divided on whether the income documentation used by Caliber Home Loans qualifies as full documentation. The differences are apparent in a pending $342.6 million issuance from Lone Star Funds, which is stocked with mortgages from Caliber. According to Fitch Ratings, Lone Star is the only current issuer of nonprime MBS to keep mortgages with nontraditional income-documentation out of its deals. The rating service said 99.4 percent of the dollar volume of the loans ...
Former Federal Housing Finance Agency Acting Director Ed DeMarco told us the bill is a good starting point and includes language that both Democrats and Republicans can agree on...
Flagstar Bank looks to have found an agreeable due diligence sampling rate for loans in its prime non-agency mortgage-backed securities. The company is preparing to issue a $476.1 million prime non-agency MBS, according to presale reports published last week. It’s the second issuance in a row from Flagstar where 30.0 percent of the loans were subject to third-party reviews. Only 20.0 percent of the loans in a $704.1 million deal Flagstar issued in April were subject to ...