FHA funding accounted for 25 percent of home-purchase financing in January, based on the three-month moving average, according to the latest Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. February numbers will be released shortly.
Nationstar appears to be the winning bidder on the Taylor Bean & Whitaker MSR pacakge. Meanwhile: Ed DeMarco, the most powerful man in mortgage finance today?
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will make a number of efforts to increase the market share for the non-agency market in 2013, according to Edward DeMarco, acting director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency. In a speech this week, he said guaranty fees on agency mortgages will continue to increase, the government-sponsored enterprises will complete significant risk-sharing transactions, and they will continue to work on a securitization platform and contractual frameworks that could be used for ...
Conforming loan limits should be lowered to help draw private capital into the mortgage market, according to recommendations from a bipartisan think tank led by former policymakers. The Bipartisan Policy Center recommended phasing out the government-sponsored enterprises and replacing them with a new “Public Guarantor” that would shift mortgage finance risk to the private sector. “A gradual reduction of the loan limits for government-guaranteed mortgages would help to rebalance the ...
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been content to let their significant holdings of non-agency mortgage-backed securities run off in recent years as opposed to selling the investments at a loss. However, the government-sponsored enterprises will likely have to sell some of their vintage non-agency MBS due to a mandate from the Federal Housing Finance Agency. A set of goals for the GSEs in 2013 released this week by the FHFA includes reducing the GSEs’ retained portfolio balances by selling 5 percent of the assets ...
FHA mortgage delinquency rates trended lower in the fourth quarter of 2012 as did the foreclosure rate – signs that the housing market recovery may be on track finally. An Inside FHA Lending analysis of top FHA servicers’ portfolios showed a modest drop in the overall past-due rate in the fourth quarter to 16.87 percent from 17.45 percent in the previous quarter. This includes loans that are 30-60 days delinquent as well as 90-day + delinquent. As of Dec. 31, FHA servicers held a total of 7.65 million loans in their portfolios, of which 2.87 percent were in some stage of foreclosure, down from 3.07 percent in the third quarter. Of that total number of FHA loans, 7.39 percent were ... [chart]
The Department of Housing and Urban Development said it will share information soon on the estimated impact of mandatory, across-the-board spending cuts on HUD/FHA programs and their recipients. A HUD spokesman declined to put a sequestration tag on all affected programs, including FHA, saying details would be available as soon as the department notifies all HUD funding recipients of automatic spending cuts that went into effect last week. The mandatory cuts to defense and discretionary spending kicked in after Congress failed to enact a plan to reduce the deficit by $1.2 trillion over 10 years, as required by ...
The recent increase in mortgage insurance premium (MIP) and other policy changes to strengthen the FHA Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund are causing borrowers with better credit to shift from FHA to conventional financing, according to a new Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance HousingPulse Tracking Survey. The monthly survey of real estate agents found that FHA remains an option for borrowers who have limited cash resources and tainted credit. However, given their individual circumstances and FHA’s recent policy changes, many would take out a conventional loan if they could qualify. With a low 3.5 percent downpayment requirement, FHA appears to ...
Banks with major Ginnie Mae portfolios – and even smaller firms – increased their purchases of delinquent mortgages out of MBS pools in the fourth quarter compared to the third as a way to save money and refinance troubled loans. According to an analysis by Inside FHA Lending, the top 50 Ginnie Mae issuers bought $12.65 billion of problem loans out trusts in fourth quarter compared to $11.17 billion in the third, an increase of 13 percent. “Once you buy the loan it goes into your portfolio,” said Tim Rood, a partner in The Collingwood Group, a Washington-based advisory firm. “You can try to re-perform it and then re-securitize it,” he said. Wells Fargo, the largest Ginnie Mae servicer in the nation with a portfolio of $412 billion, purchased ... [1 chart]
RSS