The Department of Housing and Urban Development has announced a new regulation prohibiting lenders from using sexual orientation or gender identity as a basis for determining borrower eligibility for FHA-insured mortgage financing. The regulation specifically extends federal anti-discrimination protections to lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgender persons and their families when applying for HUD-assisted or HUD-financed rental housing or an FHA-insured mortgage loan. The regulations will become effective 30 days after their publication in the Federal Register. HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said the policy will ...

The National Association of Realtors recently asked the Department of Housing and Urban Development to allow investors to participate in the FHA’s property rehabilitation program. The FHA’s 203(k) Rehabilitation Mortgage Insurance Program allows homebuyers to take out a mortgage to purchase a house, including the cost of its rehabilitation. The program also allows the current owners to finance the rehabilitation of their own homes. Currently, investors and cooperative units are barred from using the 203(k) programs. Individual condominium units may be insured if ...

Mortgage Guaranty Insurance Corp. announced a new two-year waiver from regulatory capital requirements from the Office of the Insurance Commissioner for the State of Wisconsin, which would allow it to write new business through Dec. 31, 2013. Approved on Jan. 23, the waiver came after the previous waiver expired at the end of last year. As did the prior order, the new waiver allows MGIC to write new business as long as it maintains a level of capital sufficient to keep the company afloat. The new waiver required MGIC to contribute $200 million to MGIC Indemnity Corp. (MIC), a direct subsidiary of MGIC, by Jan. 31 as part of a ...

The six federal agencies that have to respond to massive protests over a proposed qualified residential mortgage definition have offered little guidance on their next step, one that industry groups say is critical given its interaction with a separate rule that sets standards for qualified mortgages that show the borrower has the ability to repay a loan. “We will probably see a QM rule before a QRM rule,” said Joseph Pigg, senior counsel at the American Bankers Association. “Getting six regulatory agencies to agree will make QRM a longer process,” he noted. The QM/ability-to-repay rule is under...

Wells Fargo reclaimed the top ranking in residential mortgage servicing at the end of 2011, a position that the firm last held back in 2006. A new Inside Mortgage Finance ranking and analysis shows that Wells continued to build its mortgage servicing portfolio through robust loan origination activity, but it wasn’t easy. Wells originated $120.5 billion in new loans during the fourth quarter, but managed to increase its servicing portfolio by just $7.5 billion, a 0.4 percent increase. That relatively small increase was enough to move well ahead of Bank of America, which reported a huge $165.8 billion net...

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac would be brought “on budget” by adding the two government-sponsored enterprises’ outstanding obligations to the federal deficit, while also mandating the use of “fair value” accounting for the FHA to take into account risk as well as borrowing costs, under legislation sponsored by a high-ranking House Republican. Last week, the House Budget Committee passed H.R. 3581, the Budget and Accounting Transparency Act of 2012, introduced by Rep. Scott Garrett, R-NJ, as part of a comprehensive package of 10 reform bills by House GOP members who are pushing to enforce spending...

Federal banking regulators this week reminded banks and thrifts to pay close attention to how they monitor risks and calculate loss reserves in their home-equity loan business. An interagency supervisory memo sent this week does not change the regulators’ policy on allowance for loan and lease losses for closed-end second mortgages and home-equity lines of credit, but it urges lenders to “monitor all credit quality indicators” relevant to junior liens. Although many observers have raised concerns about the risk of second mortgages, delinquency rates on loans held by banks, thrifts and credit unions have been lower...

MBS and ABS markets in the U.S. are increasingly being shaped by global forces, from the impact of the European debt crisis to the worldwide adoption of new international regulatory standards and the surge in Euro securitizations that’s taking up some of the slack from the depressed U.S. non-agency MBS sector. There was an unmistakable international flavor to the ASF 2012 conference sponsored by the American Securitization Forum in Las Vegas this week. A significant number of the more than 5,000 attendees – an ASF record – came from outside the U.S., and numerous panels were devoted to global issues...

Government regulators continue to wrestle with the controversial risk-retention rule mandated by the Dodd-Frank Act that is widely seen as one key to the prospects for reviving the non-agency MBS market. Officials from one of the agencies involved in the rulemaking told attendees at this week’s annual meeting of the American Securitization Forum that regulators are still studying the landslide of comment letters that came in response to a proposed rule published in April 2011. The extended comment period closed in August. “It is in the nature of the rulemaking process that an advanced notice of proposed...

The U.S. residential housing market used to provide the lion’s share of business for non-agency asset securitization, but experts at this week’s American Securitization Forum say it will take years for the sorely damaged housing market to recover and the nationalized mortgage finance system to be overhauled. Supply and demand fundamentals in the housing market are severely broken, said Laurie Goodman, senior managing director at Amherst Securities Group. There are some 2.9 million borrowers in foreclosure or more than 12 months delinquent, plus another 400,000 units of real estate-owned properties. With...