Sixty-five percent of real estate agents would be more willing to recommend a lender if they were provided a mobile app to track the status of scheduled mortgage closings, according to a new survey by Campbell Surveys and Inside Mortgage Finance Publications. Most lenders today are not keeping us advised of the status of the loan and, more frustrating, they are requiring additional documents piecemeal, according to one real estate agent that responded to the survey. Instead of a ...
Overall FHA loan production dropped a tad during the first quarter of 2013 even as refinancing volume remained elevated, according to an Inside FHA Lending analysis of agency data. FHA lenders produced a total of $63.7 billion in new FHA-insured loans during the quarter, down 0.6 percent from the previous quarter but up 27.4 percent from the same period last year. FHA streamline refinancing rose 8.4 percent to $31.0 billion in the first quarter from the prior period. That was also up a whopping 97.8 percent from the same period last year. In a new report to Congress, the ... [2 charts]
So far a broad cross-section of industry participants and other stakeholders support the steps the Federal Housing Finance Agency has taken to establish a new securitization platform for residential MBS, the agency said in a progress report issued this week. In light of the importance of this initiative to the housing finance system, and reinforced by the comments received from the public, FHFA has directed the enterprises to move forward on the development of the [common securitization platform], the agency noted. In early March, FHFA Acting Director Edward DeMarco said...
Fannie Mae and IBM are working together on at least one big technology project: a new data center. But is the relationship about to go even further? Meanwhile, MBS issuance stayed hot in April.
Changes at Fannie Mae in 2010 would have forced Third Federal Savings and Loan to adjust its underwriting standards if the company was to continue selling mortgages to the government-sponsored enterprise. Instead, TFSL decided to differentiate itself from other lenders and launched a non-agency ARM product. To manage interest-rate risk while serving borrowers that might have trouble qualifying for an agency loan, TFSL shifted from predominantly selling fixed-rate mortgages to Fannie before July 2010 to ...
The FHA paid out more in claims than it had collected in premiums and note and property sales as of Sept. 30, 2012, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Developments quarterly report to Congress on the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. FHA disbursed $19.5 billion at the end of the third quarter last year mostly to pay claims and booked $16.7 billion in collections, resulting in an outflow of $2.8 billion, the report stated. Cash flows from operations over the last year covered 80 percent of default losses, the report noted. Premiums collected over four quarters ending Sept. 30, 2012, totaled ...
Wells Fargo will reportedly appeal a federal judges decision that a $25 billion agreement Wells and four other banks made with federal agencies and 49 state attorneys general last year to settle allegations of servicing malpractices does not make the banks immune to future claims under the False Claims Act. The Feb. 12 decision by Judge Rosemary Collyer of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia said that the landmark settlement she had approved in April 2012 does not release the from future False Claims Act claims the government may bring. Dating back to the U.S. Civil War, the FCA provides for treble damages for fraud that results in ...