Homebuying anxiety has set in with many house hunters telling Realtors they are dispirited by the stiff competition for the short number of listings they can afford…
The Department of Housing and Urban Development may need a huge cash infusion to modernize its antiquated information technology system, but Congress does not appear eager to provide the funding. Testifying before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Transportation, Housing and Urban Development, and Related Agencies, HUD Secretary Ben Carson told lawmakers it would cost approximately $500 million to shift the agency’s archaic information technology system to the cloud. Carson said it is costing the department about $250 million annually to repair and maintain the legacy IT system, which is more than 40 years old. “We can keep patching and throwing away money or we can do what needs to be done and fix it for good,” he said. Subcommittee Chairman Mario Diaz-Balart, R-FL, appeared unfazed by Carson’s cost estimate but made no commitment during the ...
Legislation that would protect veterans from predatory lending that was passed by the Senate recently could have lasting impacts on the VA home-loan guaranty program, according to legal experts. S. 2155, the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief and Consumer Protection Act, passed on March 14 by a vote of 67-31. Sixteen Democrats and one Independent joined all 50 Republicans in passing the bill. Primarily, the bill would loosen stringent rules in the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act designed to prevent the bad business practices that led to the 2008 financial crisis. A stand-alone bipartisan bill introduced by Sens. Thom Tillis, R-NC, and Elizabeth Warren, D-MA, in January was added to S. 2155 shortly before the Senate vote. The Tillis-Warren bill, Protecting Veterans from Predatory Lending Act of 2018, addresses the issue of serial refinancing, or loan churning, in which the victims are veterans. Churning refers to the ...
Ginnie Mae has passed the $1 billion mark for mortgage-backed securities issued through the Federal Home Loan Banks’ Mortgage Partnership Finance program. The MPF government MBS product was available initially to eligible participating members of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. The Chicago FHLB launched the MPF program in 1997 to give approved participating members access to the secondary mortgage market. Specifically, the program provided an outlet other than Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for member institutions to sell fixed-rate mortgage loans (conventional, government, or jumbo). Most of the institutions participating in the MPF are small banks, thrifts and credit unions with assets of less than $400 million. The MPF government MBS product arose from a 2015 partnership between Ginnie Mae and the Chicago FHLB to issue Ginnie MBS backed by ...
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