Reinstating the government-sponsored enterprises’ conventional 97 percent loan-to-value mortgage programs would benefit first-time homebuyers and borrowers with little or no cash reserves for a downpayment but adversely affect the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, according to analysts. If limited to first-time homebuyers, a conventional 97 LTV loan would offer some new homeowners better home loan financing than FHA and provide greater access to mortgage credit, said analysts with Bank of America Merrill Lynch. For years, Fannie Mae offered conventional 97 LTV loans through its MyCommmunityMortgage to help first-time homebuyers purchase a home with only a 3 percent downpayment. It was a better alternative to FHA’s main product, which required a 3.5 percent downpayment. The Fannie product also had less ...

Ginnie Mae servicing bumped up slightly in the third quarter after an uneventful prior quarter as FHA purchase activity continued to drag, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of agency data. Servicing volume rose quarter over quarter by 1.4 percent. On an annual basis, volume increased 4.6 percent from the same period a year ago. Ginnie Mae servicers ended the quarter with a total of $1.48 trillion in unpaid principal balance, up from $1.46 trillion in the previous quarter. The top three servicers saw volume drop on both quarterly and year-over-year bases. Wells Fargo remained as top servicer of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities, closing out the quarter with $422.4 million, down 0.8 percent from the previous quarter and down 0.6 percent from the prior year. The mega-servicer dominated the Ginnie market with a 28.6 percent market share. JPMorgan Chase carved out a 10.1 percent market share with ... [1 chart]

The real estate industry is urging the FHA to tighten up its pre-foreclosure sale process and be more vigilant before referring loans to the single-fThe real estate industry is urging the FHA to tighten up its pre-foreclosure sale process and be more amily loan sales program (SFLS). Commenting on the proposed section on servicing of the FHA Single Family Policy handbook, the National Association of Realtors expressed concern that the FHA is auctioning large pools of mortgages without considering the investor’s ability to achieve neighborhood stabilization goals such as homeownership preservation and affordable housing. The first step for FHA to improve servicing and pre-foreclosure efforts is to ensure mortgage servicers’ full compliance with FHA loss-mitigation requirements before referring loans to the SFLS, the NAR suggested. In addition, the FHA should ...

FHA single-family mortgage originations fell slightly in August from July as the agency’s home-purchase volume continued to falter, agency data showed. In August, the latest month for which FHA origination data are available, forward-loan originations totaled $12.6 billion, down 3.2 percent from the prior month and down 25.1 percent from the same period last year. Purchase mortgages made up 81.1 percent of all FHA-insured single-family loans originated during August, while refinances accounted for the remainder. Fixed-rate mortgages were the product of choice, as they have been in previous periods. Quicken Loans relied more on refis than on purchase lending (38 percent of new loans) as it closed the month with $534.8 million in new production, down 8.5 percent from July. Nonetheless, it was good enough for a 4.2 percent FHA market share. Second-place Wells Fargo’s total production for the month was ... [1 chart]

Mortgage industry economists agreed that 2014 loan origination volume would be down significantly from 2013, tapering off to another drop in new business in 2015. With a surprising increase in production during the third quarter and an early October bond market rally, the outlook for next year is less clear. Mike Fratantoni, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association, last week predicted that mortgage originations would grow by 7.4 percent next year ... [Includes one data chart]

Regional banks generally reported improvements to mortgage-banking income in the third quarter of 2014, according to an analysis by Inside Mortgage Trends. Third-quarter mortgage-banking income for a group of 17 regional banks rose 10.7 percent from the previous quarter and was up 12.5 percent from the third quarter of 2013, when some of the lenders reported record origination volumes. Results were mixed among the group. Flagstar Bank reported $58.40 million in mortgage-banking income ...

Chicago-based Guaranteed Rate claims to have significantly advanced towards the world’s first fully digital mortgage with Transfersafe, its latest cloud-based technology service for homebuyers. “Transfersafe is the next major step in our evolution of the mortgage process,” said Victor Ciardelli, company president and CEO. “We’ve already brought our online loan application to the market, which has funded more than $3 billion in loans to date.” Transfersafe facilitates instant ...

EverBank has relied on its correspondent jumbo business to help prop up loan origination volume in 2014 at a time when agency production figures have fallen way off 2013 levels. In fact, during the third quarter of 2014, 52 percent of the company’s $2.30 billion of new mortgage lending were jumbos. Jumbo production – most of it coming through EverBank’s correspondent program – was up 55 percent from the third quarter of 2013, when it accounted for 28 percent of the bank’s total mortgage originations ...

Residential production volume may not be much better next year, but that isn’t stopping certain growth-minded lenders from hiring loan officers. According to a survey conducted by affiliated newsletter Inside Mortgage Finance, 71 percent of mortgage companies plan to hire LOs – in varying degrees – over the next six months. Just 29 percent of respondents said they plan to cut staff. While a number of large commercial banks have pulled back from the mortgage industry in different ways ...

An Iowa-based GSE last week asked a federal court in the state to give “no weight” to a ruling earlier this month by a federal judge who dismissed litigation by other GSE shareholders, including Perry Capital and Fairholme Funds. Continental Western Insurance Co. filed papers in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa Central Division arguing that Judge Royce Lamberth was “simply wrong” in his interpretation of the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008 and his HERA-based rationale to shut down shareholders’ suits in DC.