What if the U.S. government actually defaults on its debt – what would that do to the value of MBS and Treasuries held on the balance sheet of banks? You may not want to know the answer.
The top five FHA funders – Wells Fargo, Quicken Loans, Freedom Mortgage Corp., Bank of America and Flagstar Bank – saw their combined originations decline by 5 percent.
Laurel Davis, a vice president at Fannie Mae, said the GSE learned from Freddie’s transaction and the pending risk-sharing deal from Fannie is set to receive an investment grade rating from Fitch Ratings.
HUD Delays Implementation of Short-Sale Participation Requirement. The implementation of the PFS Participation Requirement, which is found in Mortgagee Letter 2013-23, Updated Pre-Foreclosure Sale and Deed-in-Lieu-of-Foreclosure Requirements, has been delayed indefinitely. All other provisions included in the mortgagee letter remain in effect. Previous guidance on short-sale participation requirements also remain in effect until further notice. FHA to Consolidate Lender ID Numbers. The FHA will consolidate the lender identification numbers of those participating in both the FHA Title I and Title II programs, provided ...
The Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Mortgagee Review Board has collected $1.9 million from Oct. 1, 2012, through June 30, 2013, from actions taken against FHA lenders. The MRB actions involved 30 lenders, of whom 15 agreed to settle and seven agreed to indemnify HUD for its losses, according to the board’s latest data. The indemnification agreement covered 166 FHA-insured loans, and 11 lenders lost their authority to participate in the FHA single-family mortgage program. Cases heard by the MRB involved infractions, such as failure to implement and maintain a quality control plan and to review early payment default loans, which resulted in ...
Overall FHA production saw little change in the second quarter of 2013 from the previous quarter, with the fixed-rate, 30-year product, refinances and jumbos weakening somewhat during the period, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of FHA data. FHA endorsements dropped 0.7 percent to $63.2 billion from $63.7 billion on a quarter-to-quarter basis. It is also the second time the numbers have slipped since the fourth quarter, when new endorsements totaled $64.0 billion. During the quarter, the top FHA lenders saw their total production drop by ... [2 charts]
Potential investors have expressed strong interest in the pending risk-sharing deal from Fannie Mae and looking for tweaks in the structure recently used by Freddie Mac. Martin Hughes, CEO and director of Redwood Trust, noted that the real estate investment trust invested in Freddie’s Structured Agency Credit Risk transaction. He suggested two changes as the government-sponsored enterprises work to share risk with the non-agency market. Freddie’s STACR deal was structured...
Officials at Redwood Trust are calling for a gradual decline in conforming loan limits as opposed to an immediate repeal of the high-cost agency loan limits. Martin Hughes, CEO and director of the real estate investment trust, said market disruption due to a decline in loan limits is unlikely while non-agency mortgage-backed security investors said additional reforms are necessary. “If the conforming loan limits are reduced, I believe the private market would aggressively compete for those loans that exceed the new limit without any market disruption,” Hughes wrote in testimony this week for a hearing by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs. He drew a parallel to the reduction of the high-cost loan limit in 2012 from $729,750 to $625,500. A gradual decline in the high-cost loan limit would be...
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