The improvements that the Federal Housing Finance Agency is expected to make to the government’s Home Affordable Refinance Program will likely come at the expense of MBS investors, say experts. The outlines of an expanded HARP are far from clear, but the FHFA is said to be giving serious consideration to lifting the 125 percent loan-to-value limit, in addition to waiving loan-level pricing adjustments, representation and warranties imposed on lenders, valuation requirements and the portability of mortgage insurance. The agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, is expected to make an...

Alt A mortgages and interest-only loans held by Freddie Mac will be subject to new buyback reviews due to issues with the government-sponsored enterprise’s settlement with Bank of America. An audit released last week suggests that the GSE lost billions of dollars by failing to include thousands of alternative mortgages in the buyback analysis. The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General conducted the audit and – at the request of the FHFA and Freddie – redacted the exact amount of money potentially “left on the table.” ...

Ginnie Mae is following its own path in exploring potential changes to servicer compensation, a project that parallels the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Joint Initiative on Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac servicing compensation. As part of the FHA’s effort to improve default servicing, Ginnie Mae and other government housing agencies will be working separately to develop better claims mechanisms and pooling services as well as clearer risk and warranty delineations to improve the value of securitizations, the FHFA said. In a discussion paper, the FHFA, which oversees Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks, said ...

Wells Fargo and Bank of America continued to dominate the FHA market, accounting for 19.1 percent of total FHA originations in August, according to Inside FHA Lending’s analysis of agency data. Top-ranked Wells Fargo and second-place BofA accounted for $3.07 billion of the $16.06 billion in FHA-insured mortgages produced by approved lenders in August. The August volume was up 8.7 percent from July but down 34.0 percent on a year-over-year basis. In-house originations accounted for 70.9 percent of volume while home purchase loans made up 79.3 percent of loans made to borrowers during the month. An estimated 93.6 percent of loans insured by FHA were ...

Total capital backing the FHA single-family program rose modestly during the second quarter, according to a new report from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, while the demographics of borrowers served by FHA tilted slightly toward those with lower credit scores. For the first time since 2008, the share of new FHA loans for borrowers with scores below 680 edged higher. HUD attributed the change to a drop in lending to high-score borrowers and an increase in purchase-money lending for borrowers with scores below 680. Average FICO scores in new FHA business began to climb in the third quarter of 2008 (662) and...

The Federal Housing Finance Agency is looking for public input on two separate proposals that could change the way Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac servicers are compensated.This week, the FHFA issued a discussion paper detailing proposed alternatives for a GSE servicing compensation model that will benefit servicers, consumers and investors.

The use of Federal Home Loan Bank advances by banks and thrifts continued to fall during the second quarter of 2011, with one top-three bank moving up a notch due to increased advance use on a year-over-year basis, according to the Inside Mortgage Finance Bank Mortgage Database.Banks and thrifts reported using a combined $341.1 billion in advances as of June 30, 2011, down 4.7 percent from the first quarter of 2011 and off 23.4 percent from the same period a year earlier.

Despite its earnest efforts to address the problem, the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s staff recruitment and retention shortfalls seriously threaten its effectiveness as the GSEs’ regulator, its official watchdog has concluded.The FHFA’s Office of Inspector General said in a report issued last week that the Finance Agency has too few examiners to ensure the efficiency and effectiveness of the GSE oversight program.

Between 2006 and early 2011, Fannie Mae’s regulator repeatedly tolerated delays by the GSE in establishing an acceptable and effective operational risk-management program despite repeated calls to do so, according to a report by the Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General.

A report issued this week by the Federal Housing Finance Agency Office of Inspector General found preventable flaws in the FHFA’s oversight and approval of a $1.35 billion settlement between Bank of America and Freddie Mac in December 2010 which resolved most past, present and future repurchase demands on 787,000 loans.Fannie Mae made its own similar repurchase settlement with BofA for $1.52 billion that same month.The FHFA-OIG evaluation found the agreement was based on Freddie’s flawed review process and that a “lack of independent action by FHFA senior management may have led and could lead to significant losses” by the GSE.