The U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Iowa earlier this month granted preliminary approval of an $11.2 million settlement in a proposed class-action against national bank JPMorgan Chase. According to the complaint filed in 2016, Chase charged and collected interest on FHA-insured loans that paid off early. Chase was either the lender or the servicer of the loans. The lawsuit, Audino et al. v. JPMorgan Chase Bank, alleges that the bank breached the promissory notes underlying the class’s FHA-insured home loans when it collected post-payment interest without providing disclosures to borrowers who made a prepayment inquiry, request for payoff figures, or tender of prepayment. Plaintiffs allege that the bank did not use the proper FHA form to provide the disclosures to consumers. Chase denies any wrongdoing and neither admits nor concedes any actual or potential fault or liability. The bank also denies it was ...
House Votes on Bill Extending Flood Insurance Funding. The House of Representatives this week passed legislation extending the National Flood Insurance Program. On July 25, the House voted 366 to 52 to reauthorize the NFIP without amendments through Nov. 30, 2018. The extension is in a bill introduced by Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-LA, and Rep. Tom MacArthur, R-NJ, last week. The House vote came days before the NFIP’s July 31 expiration date, guaranteeing flood insurance coverage for millions of homeowners through the end of this year’s hurricane season. Congress’ failure to pass a long-term extension measure for the program has led to six stop-gap extensions and two brief lapses in 2017 and 2018. A larger bipartisan legislative package to extend and enhance the NFIP is pending in the House. Introduced by Reps. Ed Royce, R-CA, and Earl Blumenauer, D-OR, H.R. 6402 consists of ...
Both FHA and VA saw measurable declines in the number of seriously delinquent loans during the second quarter, although early-stage default rates were up slightly. A new Inside FHA/VA Lending analysis of Ginnie Mae mortgage-backed securities data found timely payments being made for 93.6 percent of FHA loans and 96.7 percent of VA loans at the end of June. Those numbers were off slightly from the first quarter, when seasonal factors typically lead to the lowest delinquency rates of the year. The increase in late payments was concentrated in loans that were one or two months overdue. There were 419,366 FHA and VA loans in this category at the end of June, up 13.5 percent from the end of March. They represented 4.13 percent of total FHA and VA loans in Ginnie MBS. FHA delinquency rates were substantially higher than those in the VA program, and the number of early-stage delinquencies ... [Charts]