With sea levels rising and flood risks increasing, federal housing regulators are proposing new base elevation standards for all properties with an FHA-insured mortgage located in flood hazard areas. Under the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s proposed rule, elevations for “non-critical” properties would be raised two feet above the site’s base flood elevation or 100-year floodplain. The proposed rule also would revise...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s single-family guaranteed housing program provided $16.14 billion in guarantees to 116,684 rural housing loans during fiscal 2016, down $2.27 billion from FY 2015, according to the Housing Assistance Council (HAC). For the Section 502 direct guarantee loan program, lenders originated approximately $958.3 million in loans in FY 2016, about $58.4 million more than the previous year. Data compiled by HAC, a national nonprofit that helps build homes and communities in rural areas of the country, show...
VA Announces Five-Digit Builder ID Number. VA Loan Guaranty (LGY) has announced that builder identification numbers are now five digits. Four-digit builder numbers will appear as 0 and four digits (01234). LGY does not approve builders. As such, builders need only register with LGY to obtain an ID number. All five digits must be...
Pingora Loan Servicing, Matrix Financial Services and Arvest Bank were the top acquirers of GSE servicing through co-issuance over the first nine months of the year.
Late this week, a spokesperson for Ginnie Mae could not offer any specifics about the revised acknowledgement agreement but noted the changes are “almost” complete.
The secondary market in transfers of agency mortgage servicing rights gained some momentum during the third quarter of 2016, according to a new Inside Mortgage Trends analysis and ranking. A total of $94.96 billion of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae MSR connected to newly issued mortgage-backed securities changed hands during the third quarter. That was up 9.4 percent from the second quarter and represented the heaviest volume since ... [Includes two data charts]
Ginnie Mae President Ted Tozer noted that investor participation “depends, in part, on a level of confidence that investment returns can be expected to be reasonably aligned with market conditions.”