The sale of residential mortgage servicing rights has been gaining steam the past few weeks – unless you happen to be in the market for Ginnie Mae product. In particular, there’s a growing concern about price discounts on Ginnie servicing rights, and a strong belief that the agency – including its president, Ted Tozer – is once again getting anxious about so many nonbanks being such large players in the market. Tozer is so concerned about the matter that the agency – with the help of the Mortgage Bankers Association – is hosting what’s been described as a “liquidity summit” in Washington, DC, with several stakeholders and regulators, including officials from the Federal Reserve and U.S. Treasury. The summit, closed to the media, is scheduled for June 24. Ginnie issued...
Streamlined mortgage refinancing with FHA and VA guarantees continued its strong growth in the first quarter of 2016, thanks mainly to low interest rates and program features, according to an analysis of agency quarterly and monthly reports. Agency-backed streamlined refinancing refers to the refinance of an existing FHA or VA loan requiring limited borrower credit documentation and underwriting and no appraisal. Streamlining applies only to the amount of documentation and underwriting the lender must perform and not to the costs in the transaction. VA IRRRL (interest rate reduction refinance loans) production rose...
Roughly $3.9 billion of mortgages with a USDA guarantee were securitized during the first three months of 2016, with the top five issuers accounting for almost 52 percent of that amount…
FHA lenders will face stiffer maximum monetary penalties later this year for various violations of agency rules and regulations. The higher monetary penalties are the result of legislation signed into law late last year requiring federal agencies to adjust the current maximum penalty amounts for inflation in order to maintain their deterrent effect. Specifically, the Federal Civil Penalties Inflation Adjustment Act of 2015 (2015 Act) requires federal agencies to adjust the level of civil monetary penalties with an initial “catch-up” adjustment through an interim final rule and subsequent annual adjustments for inflation. The interim final rules with the initial penalty adjustments must be published by July 1, 2016. The new penalty levels must take effect no later than Aug. 1, 2016. Additionally, agencies are required to make annual inflation adjustments, starting Jan. 15, 2017, and for each year going forward. The adjustments will ...
FHA single-family forward endorsements fell by 8.0 percent in the first quarter of 2016 from the prior quarter, suggesting a continued slowing in endorsement in the latter part of 2015 and early 2016 compared to earlier quarters, according to the FHA’s latest quarterly report to Congress on the state of the Mutual Mortgage Insurance Fund. Overall though, the FHA MMIF report as well as FHA monthly production reports for March and April continued to show the very positive trends – rising volume, lower delinquencies and outstanding credit quality – that have been occurring in the FHA program since 2009. Endorsement volume for purchase and refinance loans was down to $53.5 billion during the first three months of 2016 from $58.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2015, the MMI Fund report showed. Last year, forward endorsements soared in the second quarter and reached a record high in the ...