New foreclosure timeframes will become effective for all VA loan terminations completed on or after Jan. 4, 2016, according to a recent notice issued by the Department of Veterans Affairs. The notice provides a table of foreclosure timeframes – the number of calendar days required to complete a foreclosure – which the VA has determined to be reasonable and customary for all states. The timeframes are important in the calculation of the maximum interest payable on a foreclosure of a VA-guaranteed loan. The VA Home Loan Guaranty program offers a partial guaranty against loss to lenders who make home loans to veterans and active-duty military personnel. Agency regulations spell out the circumstances under which VA will pay loan-guaranty claims. Under VA rules, a guaranty claim can include unpaid interest for a period of up to 210 calendar days from the due date of the ...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency “should require the GSEs to be much more transparent in their risk-sharing transactions,” said the Urban Institute in a new report.

Some 66.5 percent of the loans to be included in the MBS are purchase mortgages. The mortgages have seasoned for four months, on average and none were delinquent at the time the deal was priced.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac sold $12.58 billion of credit risk through their popular back-end risk-transfer deals during 2015, according to a new Inside MBS & ABS tally of new issuance in the Connecticut Avenue Securities and Structured Agency Credit Risk platforms. While that was up 16.8 percent from the total for 2014, observers continue to call for more diversification in the government-sponsored enterprises’ risk-transfer activities, and greater transparency. The Federal Housing Finance Agency “should require...[Includes one data table]

The Department of Justice plans to use the tactics that it employed in cases involving the financial crisis and MBS in efforts going forward to combat financial fraud, according to agency officials. “It is hard to overstate the creativity of this effort,” Michael Blume, director of the consumer protection branch at the DOJ, said during a speech late last week. He called it “a loosely centralized effort, employing civil penalty statutory provisions, involving close cooperation with regulatory experts and leveraging resources from the entire country.” He noted...

Mortgage securitization rates have been moving higher in 2015 as ongoing new issuance catches up with this year’s surge in primary market originations. A new Inside MBS & ABS analysis reveals that 69.2 percent of the loans originated through the first nine months of 2015 have been pooled in residential MBS, up from the 67.8 percent securitization rate for all of last year. The mortgage securitization rate had dropped...[Includes one data table]

Black Knight Financial also said that despite the reintroduction of Fannie’s and Freddie’s 97 LTV product, the FHA/VA continues to dominate low downpayment lending.

An estimated $117.1 billion of mortgages exceeding the baseline conforming loan limit of $417,000 were originated during the third quarter.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have seen modest growth in programs launched early this year to serve downpayment-challenged borrowers, according to a new Inside Mortgage Finance analysis of loan-level data on agency mortgage-backed securities. Ginnie Mae has accounted for 94.5 percent of purchase mortgages with loan-to-value ratios ranging from 95.1 percent to 97.0 percent that were securitized by the three agencies during the first 11 months of 2015. Because LTV data is not available for all loans in Ginnie MBS, the agency’s actual share of these high-LTV loans is likely somewhat higher. Fannie and Freddie have established...[Includes one data table]

The mortgage industry has notched one modest victory on Capitol Hill and continues to hope for more as lawmakers try to wrap up a spending bill for the government’s 2016 fiscal year. The victory is a new process for banks and others to petition the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to designate an area as “rural” or underserved for the purposes of the CFPB’s ability-to-repay rule. More flexible mortgage products, such as balloon loans, are permitted in such markets. The change was included...