Borrowers looking to purchase a home with a loan balance above conforming loan limits have a number of financing options, according to real estate agents across the country. However, some potential homebuyers are opting to avoid jumbo mortgages by paying with cash or putting enough down to receive a conforming mortgage. Tom Popik, research director of Campbell Surveys, said respondents to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey reported that jumbo mortgage availability ...

Cove Financial is targeting borrowers who can’t qualify for agency mortgages and offering them a unique rent-to-own option. The lender’s Mortgage Alternative Program involves a process that looks a lot like the purchase-mortgage process but instead gives a borrower time to rebuild credit before purchasing a home. “It’s for people who have a downpayment but don’t currently qualify for a mortgage,” Patrick Flanagan, CEO of Cove Financial, said of the MAP. A borrower working with Cove goes through a ...

Spurred by low interest rates and strong house price appreciation, Home Equity Conversion Mortgage loan originations rose 20.3 percent during the first nine months of 2013 compared to the same period the year before, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of FHA snapshot data. HECM lenders reported $11.8 billion in total originations over the nine-month period, with initial principal amount at loan origination totaling $7.8 billion. Purchase reverse mortgage loans comprised 94.5 percent while fixed-rate mortgages accounted for ... [1 chart]

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 ...

Ginnie Mae is considering lengthening the approval time for transfers of mortgage servicing rights (MSRs) to 90 days or more from the current 30 days but has yet to issue guidance. The agency alerted sellers of MSRs and their investment banking advisors of the forthcoming change in late November at an “education summit” in Washington, according to a participant, who preferred anonymity. New and existing issuers participated in the event, and a copy of Ginnie Mae’s presentation was provided to Inside Mortgage Finance, an affiliated publication. Ginnie Mae declined to comment on the report. However, according to the presentation, the reason for ...

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 ...

The consensus among speakers at the ABS Vegas conference this week appeared to be that the MBS market is unlikely to change significantly this year. “The status quo is comfortable,” said Larry White, an economics professor at New York University’s business school. Issuers of non-agency MBS are working on reducing the government-sponsored enterprises’ dominance of the secondary market for mortgages, but the chicken-and-egg problem persists. New non-agency issuance has ground to a standstill, and Congress has been slow to move housing-finance reform legislation. In the meantime, industry observers expect...

The Structured Finance Industry Group announced this week that it will convene a taskforce to establish standardized representations and warranties for new non-agency MBS. The “Project RMBS 3.0” effort will involve a wide variety of industry participants in an effort to attract investors to non-agency MBS. If the effort sounds familiar, that’s because the American Securitization Forum issued benchmark reps and warrants in 2009 as part of its Project Restart initiative. “We want to resolve these issues once and for all,” said Eric Kaplan, managing director of Shellpoint Partners and one of the leaders of Project RMBS 3.0, during this week’s ABS Vegas conference sponsored by the SFIG and Information Management Network. He said...

The statute of limitations for filing representation-and-warranty claims on non-agency MBS starts when a deal is issued, not when a defective loan isn’t cured, according to a recent ruling by the appellate court in New York. Industry analysts suggest that the ruling will limit rep-and-warrant claims on vintage non-agency MBS as well as future claims on recently issued jumbo MBS. In December, the appellate division of New York’s Supreme Court dismissed ACE Securities Corp. v. DB Structured Products. The lawsuit was brought by a trustee on behalf of investors against Deutsche Bank, the issuer of ACE 2006-SL2, a non-agency MBS issued in 2006. The investors, along with HSBC Bank, the trustee, were looking to enforce rep-and-warrant claims in 2012. New York imposes...

The Dutch State Treasury Agency this week is auctioning $4.3 billion in non-agency MBS once held by ING, which will leave the government entity still holding about $2.2 billion of securities. The sale represents less than 1.0 percent of outstanding non-agency MBS, and it was expected to have little impact on pricing for these assets. Bids on the portfolio were...