The Department of Veterans Affairs recently clarified policy regarding lender use of credits or interest rates to pay veterans’ costs in VA home loans. Under VA regulations, lenders may charge and a veteran may pay a flat fee not exceeding 1 percent of the loan amount. The VA allows the charge provided it is in lieu of all other charges related to the costs of origination not expressly specified and allowed in the regulations. However, the agency has learned that some lenders are charging veterans interest-rate premiums in exchange for temporarily subsidizing the borrower’s monthly payments. “More precisely, an interest-rate premium is imposed as a charge for a cash advance on a loan principal,” the VA explained. While the agency allows lenders to charge borrowers for allowable costs, which may be made through an interest-rate adjustment, it clearly prohibits charges for impermissible costs, like ...

The Senate last week approved a regulatory relief bill that would grant qualified mortgage status to certain loans held in portfolio by smaller banks even if the mortgages would otherwise be non-QMs. The portfolio QM provision also has support in the House, but it has prompted concerns from some industry analysts. Moody’s Investors Service noted that if the provision becomes law, small banks won’t have to meet certain documentation requirements included in the Consumer ...

Overall production of government-insured loans fell in all three origination channels in the fourth quarter as refinancing continued to decline in 2017. A survey of FHA, VA and rural housing lenders showed originations in retail, correspondent and broker conduits totaled $248.9 billion, down 11.8 percent from 2016. Correspondent production suffered the biggest quarterly decline, 14.9 percent from the third to the fourth quarter. Production in this channel also declined 4.8 percent for the full year. Approximately $139.3 billion of FHA and VA loans came through this channel last year. Notwithstanding the decline, the correspondent share of government-insured lending grew to 56.0 percent in 2017, up from 51.9 percent in 2016. Brokers saw their share of the government-insured market rise to 10.0 percent, even as quarterly and year-over-year originations declined by 2.0 percent and 10.7 percent ,,, [ Charts ]

Home Equity Conversion Mortgage lenders ended 2017 on a positive note, thanks to a relatively strong fourth quarter, according to an analysis of FHA data. Total reverse mortgage originations rose 3.0 percent from the third quarter to end the year with $18.4 billion in overall HECM production. This was up 23.2 percent year-over-year. Purchase HECMs accounted for 76.2 percent of reverse mortgage originations in 2017. Adjustable-rate HECMs comprised 89.3 percent of loans made. Meanwhile, HECM mortgage-backed securities issuance totaled $2.25 billion in the fourth quarter, buoyed by $1.35 billion of HMBS issued in December, Ginnie Mae data show. The top five HMBS issuers accounted for $5.72 billion or 31.1 percent of all HMBS issued in 2017. American Advisors Group remained the dominant HECM lender in 2017, producing $2.8 billion over the 12-month period, which represented a ... [ Chart ]

Mortgage rates fell this week for the first time in almost two months, but the respite may not be enough to save the industry from what could turn out to be a brutal round of belt-tightening and job cuts. Then again, it all depends on what type of lender you work for. According to interviews conducted by Inside Mortgage Trends over the past few weeks, many conventional lenders are being extremely cautious about their headcounts, while non-agency originators are feeling ...

Commercial banks and savings institutions serviced $3.621 trillion in home loans for other investors at the end of 2017, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of call-report data. After a brief spurt higher in the third quarter, bank servicing-for-others was down 0.8 percent during the final three months of the year. The industry’s SFO balance had been dropping steadily since the end of 2010 – with declining balances in 20 of 22 quarters – as many ... [Includes one data chart]

Earnings from production-related activity and servicing fell modestly in the fourth quarter, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis of earnings reports filed by a dozen top publicly traded companies. The 12 lenders reported a combined $1.125 billion in income from loan originations and secondary market sales during the fourth quarter. That was down 9.0 percent from the previous period. Some of the earnings decline resulted from a slowdown ... [Includes one data chart]

The Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. have announced offerings of multiple residential reverse mortgage pools for sale to investors. The HUD pools are comprised of approximately 650 reverse mortgage notes with a total loan balance of about $136 million. The sale consists of due and payable first-lien reverse mortgages secured by single-family, vacant residential properties where all borrowers are deceased and none is survived by a non-borrowing spouse. The reverse-mortgage sale is the third offering of its type. As with past offerings, the sale will be by competitive bidding on April 11, 2018. The loans will be sold without FHA insurance and with servicing released. The loans are expected to be offered in regional pools. Meanwhile, the FDIC will unload in open auction 3,280 FHA-insured reverse-mortgage loans from the ...

Accounting firm Deloitte & Touche has agreed to pay the federal government $149.5 million to settle False Claims Act liabilities arising from its audits of failed FHA lender Taylor, Bean &Whitaker Mortgage Corp.Deloitte was TBW’s independent outside auditor from 2002 through 2008, when the subprime mortgage market unraveled, triggering a financial and housing crisis. The Department of Justice alleged that, during the period in question, TBW had been running a fraudulent scheme involving the purported sale of fictitious or double-pledged mortgages. According to court documents, Lee Bentley Farkas, former chairman of TBW, and six other banking executives engaged in a more than $2.9 billion fraud scheme that contributed to the failures of Colonial Bank and TBW. Farkas and his crew allegedly misappropriated in excess of $1.4 billion from Colonial Bank’s warehouse lending division in Orlando, FL, and approximately $1.5 billion from Ocala Funding, a mortgage-lending facility controlled by TBW.

The reverse-mortgage industry is in an uncomfortable place in the first quarter of 2018 due to lower volumes, higher costs and lower margins – the same issues that ail the traditional forward-lending business currently, says a new analysis by the Stratmor Group. Applications and counseling requests are down more than expected for this time of the year despite the recent rule changes implemented by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to ensure the long-term viability of the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program. Stratmor projects HECM volume at $1.6 billion in 2018, down from approximately $2.0 billion in 2017, due mainly to dwindling refinances. “Given the reduction in the interest-rate floor, it is reasonable to expect that gain-on-sale margins will decline, but just how far, who knows,” said Jim Cameron, a senior partner at Stratmor. “The reduction in unit ...