The 25 basis-point mortgage insurance premium cut announced this week by the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s departing leadership could switch $50 billion of issuance from Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac business to FHA as well as cause premium Ginnie Mae MBS to prepay faster, according to market analysts. Absent any adversarial pricing by private mortgage insurers, a guaranty fee adjustment by the Federal Housing Finance Agency or a reversal by the Trump administration, analysts with Bank of America Merrill Lynch see up to 12 percent of purchase and 2 percent of refis shifting to FHA. On June 9, HUD Secretary Julian Castro announced...

Buyers and sellers are waiting to see if the 75 basis point increase in rates will stick around or turn out to be a fluke and then reverse course...

Any pushback against the FHA’s 25 basis-point cut in the annual mortgage insurance premium remains to be seen despite grumblings from Capitol Hill, said stakeholders and industry analysts. Earlier this week, the outgoing leadership of the Department of Housing and Urban Development surprised the industry by reducing the annual MIP for 30-year FHA mortgages by 25 bps, and eliminated the higher MIP for loans exceeding $625,500. There are...[Includes one data table]

Mortgage compliance experts say there’s still a strong need for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to provide more guidance about acceptable business relations under Section 8 of the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act. One of the issues that came to the fore in the bureau’s enforcement action against PHH Mortgage was lenders’ relationships under marketing services agreements. Even though banks these days may be using MSAs to a lesser extent than nonbanks, there is still a need for the CFPB to more clearly delineate do’s and don’ts. “On the lender side of the mortgage industry, there is...

CPR&T predicted that the asset value of Ocwen’s mortgage servicing portfolio likely won’t benefit much from the recent spike in interest rates…

The change – whose likelihood was first reported by Inside Mortgage Finance last Thursday – affects new loans with a closing/disbursement date of Jan. 27, 2017.

Presently, Japan is the volume leader in Ginnie ownership at roughly $204 billion…

Why the change of heart? For most of last year, HUD and FHA officials nixed the idea of cutting the premium…

One big positive for lenders: the mortgage industry could see a reduction in new rule-making from HUD and perhaps a reversal of certain regulations promulgated during the Obama administration.

Mortgage insurance stocks aren't have a good day. Blame the FHA MIP cut?