Freddie Mac could save millions of dollars a year in faulty reimbursement payouts to its servicers by investing additional resources in a wider selection of reviews, according to an audit issued last week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General. In 2013, Freddie reimbursed 460 of its servicers $1.4 billion but identified and denied $126 million in what the IG calls “erroneous” claims. The IG noted that Freddie’s top 10 servicers, relative to total reimbursements, accounted for 87 percent of all reimbursements made by Freddie in 2013. Servicers of Freddie and Fannie Mae loans often maintain...
Banks’ mortgage banking efforts through two quarters in 2014 pale in comparison to the first half of last year, though income and other metrics improved in the second quarter, according to an analysis of call report data by Inside Mortgage Trends, an affiliated newsletter. Banks had a total of $4.91 billion in mortgage banking income in the second quarter, up 45.5 percent from the first three months of the year. However, mortgage banking income was well below levels seen in the first half of 2013, before the most recent refinance boom ground to a halt. Banks had...
The FHA will no longer allow lenders to charge interest payments previously owed beyond the date the FHA mortgage was paid in full – a policy change that could help borrowers save some money. Currently, lenders can charge interest on FHA loans through the end of the month when they are paid off. The new rule is effective for loans paid off on or after Jan. 21, 2015. The policy change responds...
The Federal Housing Finance Agency last week proposed increasing some of the benchmark levels for Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s affordable housing goals through 2017, while also establishing new housing subgoals for low-income multifamily properties. The proposed rule – which requests public comment – presents three alternatives for determining whether a government-sponsored enterprise has met the congressionally mandated single-family housing goals for 2015-2017. The first option would keep...
JPMorgan Chase, whose chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon has contemplated leaving the FHA program, originated $1.14 billion during the first half, a 55 percent decline from a year ago.
The study’s findings challenge certain beliefs about FHA lending, namely that high insurance premiums, lender overlays and low credit scores are denying many qualified borrowers access to the program.
The debt collection industry still has plenty of work to do in terms of correcting its collection attempts against delinquent borrowers, according to a new ranking and analysis by Inside the CFPB. “Incorrect collection attempts” were far and away the leading consumer complaint about the industry submitted to the CFPB, with more than 12,000 such gripes filed, nearly 40 percent of all debt-collection criticisms, the analysis found. (See chart on page 7.) The biggest offender in this regard was Encore Capital Group, with 925 such complaints. MNE Services Inc., on the other hand, had the lowest number of gripes in this area, 19, among the top 50 companies in the ranking. “Communication tactics” ranked second among types of consumer complaints ...
Lowering the government-sponsored enterprises’ loan limits is one of the main goals for firms involved in the non-agency market but the effort lacks broad support in the mortgage industry, let alone in Congress. Among those submitting comments to the Treasury Department this month regarding how to increase non-agency activity, the American Bankers Association was one of the biggest supporters of decreased loan limits for the GSEs. The conforming loan limit is at $417,000 and ...
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