HUD Delays Implementation of Short-Sale Participation Requirement. The implementation of the PFS Participation Requirement, which is found in Mortgagee Letter 2013-23, Updated Pre-Foreclosure Sale and Deed-in-Lieu-of-Foreclosure Requirements, has been delayed indefinitely. All other provisions included in the mortgagee letter remain in effect. Previous guidance on short-sale participation requirements also remain in effect until further notice. FHA to Consolidate Lender ID Numbers. The FHA will consolidate the lender identification numbers of those participating in both the FHA Title I and Title II programs, provided ...

Redwood Trust and Credit Suisse, the jumbo MBS sector’s two biggest players, slowed their securities issuance during the third quarter.

Moody's, in a new report, notes that Bank of America outsources roughly 25 percent of its “early stage” collection efforts to vendors.

Policymakers at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the FHA need to work with lenders to identify and resolve sources of buyback risk uncertainty in order to loosen the market’s grip on tight credit conditions, according to a white paper issued this week by Moody’s Analytics and the Urban Institute. Disagreements over lender judgment calls, post-underwriting chances in circumstances and nitpicking over trivial mistakes by the two government-sponsored enterprises and the FHA have stepped up put-backs “in ways lenders cannot adequately address through better underwriting or pricing,” note paper co-authors Mark Zandi and Jim Parrott. In 2011 and 2012, Fannie and Freddie together required...

The Federal Reserve is pointing its finger at both loan officers and applicants for the misreporting of borrower income.

All five mortgage servicers participating in the settlement will be subject to tougher testing, said Joseph Smith, the settlement’s monitor.

Some in the mortgage broker community have suggested that operating as a mini-correspondent could help brokers bypass points-and-fees complications with the qualified mortgage definition under the ATR rule.

Collateral was much less of an issue in the purchase market, accounting for just 14 percent of conventional denials.

“Our tool puts valuable information into the hands of the public in an accessible way," said CFPB Director Richard Cordray. But will consumers use this information against mortgage lenders?

Despite recovering house values in most markets, insufficient collateral remained the biggest obstacle for consumers trying to get mortgage financing in 2012, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. In virtually every category of the market, loan applicants were more successful in getting approved for a mortgage last year than they were back in 2011, the HMDA data show. Some 15.5 percent of loan applicants were turned down last year ... [Includes one data chart]