FHA-approved lenders should make sure they leave no stones unturned to ensure that loans submitted for endorsement meet FHA’s strict underwriting criteria. It is the responsibility of direct endorsement lenders to scrutinize every loan for compliance with FHA lending guidelines, including income verification, credit analysis and property appraisals. JPMorgan Chase admitted it failed to do all of the above. Last week, the bank acknowledged it violated the False Claims Act and agreed to pay $614 million in cash to settle government charges it improperly certified poorly underwritten loans for FHA and VA guarantees. The defective loans later ...

The whistleblower whose investigative efforts led to the landmark $25 billion national mortgage settlement between the federal government, 49 state attorneys general and five of the largest mortgage servicers is at it again. This time, Lynn Szymoniak is suing 22 companies for using fraud to obtain FHA insurance – in some instances, VA guaranties – for defective loans that later were securitized through Ginnie Mae and sold to investors. Szymoniak, who is suing under the False Claims Act, gained notoriety from a 2011 interview on “60 Minutes” in which she ...

VA activity appeared to lose momentum in the fourth quarter of 2013 as approved lenders reported $129.9 billion in total originations for the year, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of Department of Veterans Affairs data. Production has been gradually slipping since the end of the first quarter, when lenders posted an aggregate $37.5 billion in new VA loans. The fourth quarter ended with $22.4 billion in total originations, which was down a hefty 32.1 percent from the previous quarter. On a year-over-year basis, however, VA originations were up by 1.5 percent. Refinancing accounted for 9.9 percent of VA production in 2013, up slightly from ... [1 chart]

NRMLA Plans to Recruit Certain Borrowers to Offer HECM Testimonials. Seeing so much negative publicity against reverse mortgages, the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association is planning to recruit borrowers who are willing to share with reporters their positive experiences with the product. The aim is to build a “repository” of borrowers who are willing to be interviewed by reporters on the merits of having a Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loan. Media representatives typically contact the NRMLA for borrower interviews, and having a borrower contact list would ...

Purchase-mortgage lending exceeded refinance production for the first time in five years during the fourth quarter of 2013, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis. The shift has been in the works for some time as the potential refinance market began to shrink when interest rates rose late in the second quarter of last year. Mortgage lenders originated an estimated $168 billion of purchase mortgages during the fourth quarter of 2013, accounting for 55.1 percent of total originations. The last time purchase mortgages comprised more than half of new production was back in the fourth quarter of 2008. But purchase-mortgage originations fell...[Includes three data charts]

Speculators, in the form of “short-sellers,” are zeroing in on the mortgage industry, including some of the fastest-growing servicers of the past two years: Nationstar Mortgage, Ocwen Financial, and Walter Investment Management Corp. But one mortgage stock being shorted more than any of these is PHH Corp., the parent company of PHH Mortgage, the nation’s seventh largest originator. According to figures compiled by Standard & Poor’s, as of early February, speculators had sold short 17.2 million shares of PHH common. As a ratio of shares outstanding in PHH, this comes...[Includes one data chart]

New production of single-family agency MBS in January 2014 fell to its lowest monthly volume in five years, according to a new market analysis and ranking by Inside MBS & ABS. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae generated a total of $67.82 billion in single-family MBS last month, a 10.4 percent drop from December 2013. It was the weakest monthly issuance since January 2009, when $64.39 billion of new agency MBS were produced as world financial markets tried to recover from collapse. Market conditions – if you don’t consider the weather outside – were...[Includes one data chart]

Credit Suisse late last week broke a two-month lull in jumbo MBS issuance, and JPMorgan Chase appears to be planning a new security. However, the jumbo MBS market is far from flourishing as other issuers continue to avoid the sector. Credit Suisse issued a $287.42 million jumbo MBS last week. CSMC Trust 2014-IVR1 received a AAA rating from DBRS with credit enhancement of 6.85 percent on the top-rated tranche. The deal had...

The new judge presiding over Bank of America’s $8.5 billion settlement with MBS investors this week countermanded, for the moment, last week’s approval of the deal by her predecessor, giving a major opponent of the agreement another chance to argue against it. New York State Supreme Court Justice Saliann Scarpulla agreed to delay approval of the deal until at least Feb. 19 to hear American International Group’s appeal. Last week, Justice Barbara Kapnick approved the settlement agreement, except for loan modification claims, as one of her last acts before she took a promotion to the state’s Appellate Division. BofA agreed...

The mortgage market is just one month into the world of qualified mortgage lending under the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule. But behind the scenes, investors, legal advisors and technology vendors are working to get ready to enter the non-QM space. “I can tell you, at least from the investor side, from the number of investors that I talk to – and some of these are cradle-to-grave guys that have originating arms in their organizations, or maybe correspondent networks for which they’re buying – they are building infrastructure and capability to process and buy these non-QM type loans,” said Dave Hurt, vice president at CoreLogic. “So there is genuine interest and significant enough confidence that there will be a market that they’re making investments both in technology and infrastructure to do that.” And it’s not...