VA lenders are reporting faster turnaround times in processing borrower requests for certificates of eligibility (COEs). At a Ginnie Mae summit in Washington, DC, recently, agency officials said more than 70 percent of COEs are issued instantaneously. That is a vast improvement from six years ago, when it took VA about 26 days to issue a COE, said VA Acting Director Jeffrey London. A certificate of eligibility verifies a veteran’s eligibility for the VA home loan benefit. VA’s electronic applications can verify eligibility and issue a COE in a matter of seconds. “Previously we were getting less than 40 percent electronic submissions of COE requests,” London recalled. “We have improved our system so that this year alone, 95.6 percent of our COEs are issued electronically. Out of that 95.6 percent, 65 percent are issued automatically with no human involvement.” London said the ...
The Department of Veterans Affairs is urging VA lenders, borrowers and other participants in its loan guaranty program to adopt recommended standards, equipment and activities to reduce water and energy usage and to ease the impact of natural disasters. The VA has recommended wind-hazard standards, resilient building and retrofitting standards, a water- and energy-saving program, and property-and-energy conservation strategies to help VA borrowers protect their homes against storms, flooding, earthquakes and other calamities. VA made clear it allows, but does not require, any of the recommended standards, strategies or equipment. The programs are strictly voluntary, it said. The agency noted the increasing incidence of extreme weather events, earthquakes and flooding, which makes planning and building in the most resilient and economically feasible ways all the ...
Wells Fargo – no doubt – is taking it on the chin for its “account fabrication” scandal tied to credit cards and deposits, but so far the damage has yet to seep into its mortgage business in a major way, but reports suggest certain correspondents are balking at doing business with the megabank. Dave Akre, managing director of Five Oaks Investment Corp., said he knows some loan officers working for Wells correspondents who are no longer offering the megabank’s jumbo products “due to recent issues.” Those “issues,” he pointed out in an interview with Inside Mortgage Finance, involve...
As recently as three years ago, few companies were willing to finance originations of nonprime mortgages, either via warehouse funding or acquiring the paper as whole loans. Daniel Perl, CEO of Citadel Servicing, said there are currently a number of Wall Street companies and other firms that will provide a certain amount of liquidity for one to three years, while demand for whole loans and MBS is also increasing. “There’s a lot to be said for this market today that you couldn’t say three years ago,” he said earlier this month during a webinar hosted by Inside Mortgage Finance. Tom Hutchens, a senior vice president of sales and marketing at Angel Oak Mortgage Solutions, said...
During the second quarter, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Veterans Affairs home loan guaranty program all saw significant increases in production of “agency jumbo” loans – mortgages with loan amounts exceeding the baseline $417,000 agency loan limit. A new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis reveals that the agencies’ combined jumbo production, including FHA activity, rose 53.3 percent to $36.2 billion during the second quarter. That represented the highest quarterly total since “emergency” high-cost loan limits were established in the aftermath of the financial crisis. The FHA had...[Includes three data tables]
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