The Senate Committee on Appropriations last week voted 31 to 0 to set aside $40.2 billion in discretionary spending for the Department of Housing and Urban Development for FY 2018. The full committee vote on July 31 followed a subcommittee vote earlier in the week. The Senate funding bill includes $400 billion in new loan commitments under the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, including the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, and $130 million for FHA’s administrative expenses. However, the bill did not grant a HUD request for authority to impose a lender fee to help cover FHA’s information technology upgrades, risk management and quality-assurance improvements. The House HUD spending bill provided $130 million for administrative costs and added another $5 million for IT enhancement. House appropriators passed their version late last month. The Senate bill also ...
A property management contractor for the Department of Housing and Urban Development has agreed to pay $4.3 million to resolve allegations that it billed the agency for FHA-related work it did not perform in violation of the federal False Claims Act. Cityside Management Corp. of Manchester, NH, allegedly failed to inspect the work of third-party vendors that it hired to perform termite inspections, treatments and repairs on repossessed houses in HUD’s real estate-owned inventory, as required by its contract with HUD. HUD’s inspector general investigated the case and referred it to the Department of Justice. Following the financial crisis, HUD held title to a large number of foreclosed homes acquired by borrowers with FHA financing. HUD contracted with various field service managers, including Cityside, to prepare the REO properties for resale. According to the Office of the U.S. Attorney for the ...
Mortgage-investing real estate investment trusts are having a field day this year, selling additional common stock – and even preferred – to the public, while nonbank lender/servicers continue to be locked out of the market. And given the fact that origination volumes could wind up 20 percent lower this year than in 2016, it’s unlikely that investors will give nonbanks much of a chance unless they can prove themselves as “disruptors” with a “fintech” bent to their operating strategy. But that isn’t...
The clock is ticking on the effective date of a host of new data collection and reporting requirements under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, and mortgage lenders are still waiting for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to complete some components of the rule necessary for full compliance. For this reason, the regulator should delay mandatory compliance much later than the scheduled January 2018 implementation date, industry trade groups said. “Although we greatly appreciate the CFPB’s work to facilitate implementation of this major data collection and reporting rule, the CFPB’s regulatory process and technological framework for this rule are still incomplete,” lender representatives said in a letter this week to the agency. Proposed amendments have not been finalized...
In past SEC filings Radian hinted that a write-down tied to its 2014 $305 million purchase of Clayton might be in order, but the company never pulled the trigger.
The House Appropriations Committee this week approved a FY 2018 spending bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development with a $135 million allocation for information technology upgrades in lieu of a proposed lender fee. The set-aside also covers quality control and risk management improvements as well as other administrative costs. The recommended funding is $5 million more than the FY 2017 enacted level for administrative contract expenses and $25 million below the budget request. Approved by a vote of 31 to 20, the bill provides HUD with $38.3 billion in discretionary spending for FY 2018, down $487 million from the current level. The House bill authorizes $400 billion for loan guarantees under the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund, including the Home Equity Conversion Mortgage program, and $500 billion for Ginnie Mae. Ginnie will also receive $25.4 million for agency staffing, which is ...
Affordability and job availability are driving millennials to seek homes in more affordable markets, particularly in the upper Midwest, according to Ellie Mae data for the month of May. Ellie Mae’s Millennial Tracker, which monitors millennial mortgage applications during specific times, found that the higher percentages of loans made to millennial borrowers are in Hutchinson and Austin, MN, and Wahpeton and Williston, ND. Anniston-Oxford-Jacksonville, AL, rounded out the top-five markets. Ellie Mae defines millennials as applicants born between 1980 and 1999. Data showed that 48 percent of millennial borrowers who closed loans in May were single. In Hutchinson, for example, the majority of borrowers were single men. “This suggests millennials may be embracing homeownership in these areas for reasons other than what we have historically seen, which was family formation,” explained ...
The nation’s megabanks have started reporting second-quarter results, revealing a mixed bag when it comes to residential originations, according to a new analysis from Inside Mortgage Finance. The nation’s largest home lender, Wells Fargo, so far, has turned in the strongest performance of the group, funding $56.0 billion of product, a handsome 27.3 percent improvement from the first quarter of the year. Bank of America held its own with a 15.8 percent sequential improvement and U.S. Bank hiked its production game by a more modest 10.2 percent. And then there are...[Includes one data table]
The House Appropriations Committee this week approved a fiscal year 2018 funding bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development with a $135 million allocation for systems enhancements, quality control and risk management improvements in lieu of a proposed lender fee. Approved by a vote of 31 to 20, the bill provides HUD with $38.3 billion in discretionary funding for FY 2018, down $487 million from the current level. The House measure authorizes...
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