The Department of Housing and Urban Development is requiring servicers of FHA-insured mortgages to delay foreclosure for a year and to evaluate all borrowers for the Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP) and other similar loss-mitigation programs. The move is one of the improvements to the FHA Distressed Asset Stabilization Program, a direct-sale pilot program that allows pools of foreclosure-bound mortgages to be sold to qualified bidders. Bidders are encouraged to work with borrowers to help cure the loan – a less costly alternative to foreclosure or an REO (real estate-owned) sale. An FHA servicer can place a troubled loan into a DASP pool if the borrower is at least six months delinquent on their mortgage and the servicer has exhausted all FHA loss-mitigation options. Previously, servicers could foreclose six months after they received the loan. They were also encouraged, though not required, to ...

The FHA has automated the delivery of notices to targeted lenders that receive an “unacceptable” rating following a post-endorsement review of a sample of their FHA-insured mortgage loans. The agency’s notification process shifted from manual to electronic effective on April 27, with the deployment of a new automated system for delivering notices of unacceptable findings, or eFindings letter. The change speeds up the process of determining whether a direct-endorsement lender should be subject to an indemnification request from FHA because of faulty underwriting. The enhanced delivery process will make it easier for lenders to do business with the FHA, the agency said. The post-endorsement audit is crucial to the success of the FHA’s direct-endorsement program. The FHA performs a post-endorsement technical review (PETR) on selected cases to evaluate the risk loans pose to ...

Freddie Mac has announced a new “modification solution” screen in Workout Prospector (WP) to facilitate the settlement of modifications of mortgages guaranteed by the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Housing Service. Before entering the data through the modification solution screen, servicers must first have RHS’ written approval to modify the loan, according to latest servicing guidance from the government-sponsored enterprise. When submitting data to Freddie via Workout Prospector, the servicer must complete the data entry in accordance with the instructions in the WP user’s guide and the terms of the RHS modification-approval letter, the GSE said. After completing its review of the data, Freddie will change the WP system status to either “approved” or “declined” with respect to the modification of an RHS mortgage. However, the change does not constitute an approval or denial of the ...

Mortgage banking appeared to become somewhat more profitable during the first quarter of 2015, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports filed by a diverse group of 19 publicly-traded companies. The group – all but one of them banks – reported a total of $3.496 billion in mortgage banking income during the first quarter. That was up 10.2 percent from the end of last year. It also represented a 23.0 percent increase over the first quarter of 2014, one of the ...

PHH Corp., the largest publicly traded nonbank mortgage originator in the nation, is a company that has perplexed investors and analysts for years. In business for decades, it survived the subprime crisis by never originating a “B” or “C” loan. It stuck to its knitting as the largest private-label funder and servicer in America. In 2007, it was almost bought by Countrywide Financial Corp., a sale which would have been disastrous for management and employees, given what happened to CFC ...

The majority of the 9.3 million borrowers who lost their homes between 2006 and 2014 will likely become eligible to re-enter the home purchase market within the next nine years, according to an analysis by the National Association of Realtors. However, only about a quarter of them are expected to actually return to the market. “The extended time needed to repair credit scores or save for a downpayment, combined with other overlapping post-distress factors on credit quality, such as ...

D. Steve Boland, Bank of America’s home loans originations executive, says retail mortgage lending is the perfect way to connect with the bank’s customers. In an interview for a special report published by Inside Mortgage Finance Publications, Boland noted that BofA serves one out of every two banking customers in the country. “We have a tremendous footprint and franchise, from our financial centers to the mortgage loan officers and all of the other associates that serve our customers,” he said ...

Federal regulators issued a document this month clarifying Basel III capital requirements that apply to banks. Among other issues, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., Federal Reserve and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency addressed the treatment of certain loan modifications and FHA loans. The capital rules took effect Jan. 1 for most banks, with a phase-in period for many aspects of the rules. The federal regulators said that when a mortgage isn’t in default and ...

Vintage prime adjustable-rate mortgages went delinquent at a rate 30 percent higher when they were securitized privately, according to an economist with the Federal Reserve System. The study was based on mortgages originated in 2005 and 2006, at the height of the aggressive underwriting in the non-agency mortgage market. “We find that private-securitized loans perform worse than observably similar, non-securitized loans, which provides evidence for adverse selection ...

First Horizon National Corp. has announced an agreement in principle with the federal government to settle potential claims related to the underwriting and origination of FHA-insured mortgages during the run-up to the financial crisis. Disclosed in a regulatory filing, the agreement between First Tennessee Bank and the Department of Justice and the Department of Housing and Urban Development covers FHA loans originated from 2006 through 2008, which have gone to claim ...